Not surprisingly, when we are told, we find many corporations turn up on both lists. To compound suspicions that this is no coincidence, ministers are reported to have intervened with the bureaucracy on behalf of political contributors -- to say nothing of friends, family, hoteliers and ex-lovers -- while lobbyists are discovered to be on the payroll both of corporations seeking favours from the government and of ministers in a position to dispense them.

There would seem to be two possible ways of cleaning up this appalling mess, so rife with potential conflicts of interest or worse. One would allow the two-way flow of funds to continue, subsidies in one direction, contributions the other, but would hope, by means of a combination of full disclosure and close policing, to deter the parties from making any specific exchanges of one for the other. The other would simply cut off the flow of funds altogether, ending any possibility of improper influence: no business subsidies, no corporate contributions and no political meddling in the bureaucracy.

Which of these has the Prime Minister proposed? Disarmingly, neither. Certainly the money will still flow: At most, we are promised "limits" on corporate campaign contributions, in legislation that is still months away, while the massive departmental misspending unearthed in audit after audit will continue unabated. But the collection of half-measures unveiled in yesterday's "ethics package" fall well short of full disclosure, while leaving intact the same lax system of enforcement that turned Parliament Hill into the casbah of conflict of interest we see today.

This last point has broader significance. Whatever new rules the Prime Minister may see fit to introduce, it remains the case that almost all of the behaviour complained of above should reasonably have been banned under existing ethical guidelines -- should have been, and would have, had there been anyone with the power and the inclination to enforce them.

We know of the many ways in which the current ethics counsellor falls short of the sort of independence this requires. He is, as the name implies, neither an investigator nor a commissioner, but an advisor, hired by the Prime Minister and answering to him. He has no power to compel evidence, or to enforce his findings. All of this remains the case today. He may not be quite so tongue-tied, now that he has the promise of five years' job security, but he is just as toothless.

The same half-reforms are in evidence throughout. The Prime Minister has reluctantly -- very reluctantly -- agreed to rules blocking ministers from personally lobbying Crown corporations, as in his famous phone calls to the president of the Business Development Bank of Canada. But ministers' staff would not be under the same constraints -- at the least, they could "refer" interventions from others -- and Mr. Chretien made clear his desire that "the system will be able to produce the same results." Likewise, individuals could no longer lobby government departments while employed in the leadership campaigns of the ministers responsible for them. But other members of the same lobbying firm could, and the same individuals would be free to lobby other departments. Indeed, nothing would prevent the same individuals from lobbying the same department, before or after working on the minister's campaign.

The same careful drafting means ministers will not, as claimed, be forced to disclose who is contributing to their leadership campaigns. They have, it is true, been instructed to disclose all contributions received until now, but have been given 30 days: time enough to return anything smacking of trouble. As for future donations -- there being no campaign at present -- ministers have been given the option of placing these in a blind trust.

This would not be so worrisome, had we more confidence that, indeed, "blind means blind." You will remember those were the words the Prime Minister used to describe his own holdings, notably the unpaid debt on his golf course shares, which turned out not to be blind at all. And even where contributions are disclosed, absent further reforms it is a simple enough matter for the publicity-shy to launder their donations through willing partners. Oh, I almost forgot: none of this even applies to non-ministers.

Partial disclosure, sham enforcement, lots of artful loopholes: I suppose we should have expected all this. But I rather thought the Prime Minister might surprise us, what with his leadership being on the line and all. What can have deterred him?