HERE’S A statement no one would want to hear his or her banker make:
“Sir, you seem to have all your financial ducks in a row, have a good business plan and clearly have the capacity to service the loan. However, I’m going to refuse the loan because I understand there were some dodgy moments in your past that reflect on your personal integrity.”
Pardon? Was your degree in business and economics or ethics and morality?
And whose standard of “integrity” is at play – mine, yours or some higher authority whose definition of integrity may be far from mainstream?
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But this seems to be precisely the judgment that the Conservative government is asking loans officers at Farm Credit Canada and four other financial crown corporations to make.
A statement from agriculture minister Gerry Ritz issued late on Sept. 6, hours before the election call Sept. 7, said that henceforth, FCC loans officers would have to give “due consideration” to not just the financial fundamentals but also the “personal integrity of persons applying for financial assistance or other benefits from the corporations.”
No definition of “personal integrity” was offered.
By press time more than two days later, the government’s only response to requests for an explanation was that the announcement said it all.
So this is the extent of the explanation, a statement from trade minister Michael Fortier, responsible for some of the other affected crown corporations, that this “will ensure that the government is diligent in helping responsible Canadians secure financial support to help grow the Canadian economy.”
Irresponsible Canadians need not apply.
Oh, and there was one other hint.
When it was revealed that former Liberal public works minister Alfonso Gagliano, disgraced and fired but never charged for his role as an overseer of the Quebec sponsorship scandal, had qualified for a $550,000 FCC loan this summer to help him buy a Quebec vineyard and winery, prime minister Stephen Harper’s press secretary Dimitri Soudas had this to say: “Alfonso Gagliano receiving a loan from Farm Credit Canada was disturbing. The Conservative government believes that money should go to help farmers, not former Liberal cabinet ministers.”
Even, apparently, if those former ministers want to become farmers and have the business plan to make it happen.
Maybe it also related to the Business Development Bank loan to a friend of former prime minister Jean Chrétien in the 1990s, a loan that became the heart of the so-called Shawinigate brouhaha.
Who knows? They’re not saying, although while campaigning Sept. 8, Harper said, on another topic: “I don’t think you should make policy on individual events.”
It is reasonable for a loans officer to check an applicant’s financial background, credit rating and evidence of past financial fraud or loan repayment delinquency that might affect the success of a business relationship.
But “personal integrity,” without precise guidelines, has a much broader definition.
Critics of the edict were outraged, labelling it scary, Big Brother-like and inappropriate interference in an arm’s-length financial crown corporation.
Without explanation, definition and strict guidelines available for public scrutiny, their questions seem reasonable.
