Jeff Monaghan's inspiration and/or self-image:
Posted on 05/14/2007 11:07:18 AM PDT by GMMAC
Anarchist leaker covets disorder
By Ezra Levant
Calgary Sun
Monday, May 14, 2007
Jeff Monaghan, a communications worker in the federal environment department, was arrested last week in connection with an illegal leak of a confidential draft of the government's policy on Kyoto.
Monaghan has not been charged with anything, but he has been fired from his job and he has not denied leaking the document.
Leaking government secrets can be more than just a political embarrassment.
If government announcements are known before they are officially made public, it grants an advantage to anyone looking to take advantage of their insider knowledge -- including making a windfall profit.
This is obvious in the case of government budgets, where tax changes are announced.
The same applies to significant government programs, especially ones that include taxes, regulations and subsidies, like Canada's Kyoto policy.
And that's the document that Monaghan is accused of leaking.
Monaghan held a press conference in the wake of his arrest, and delivered an environmentalist rant: "Our society knows the threat presented by the changing climate, global warming, and the rapidly increasing growth of industrial emissions," he said, hardly the model of civil service objectivity.
"We deserve real action, not cynically calculated PR campaigns and witch-hunts on public servants" -- the last part being a reference to himself.
If Monaghan did indeed leak the draft, his public blast towards the government indicates he did so in the interest of, well, what?
The leak didn't stop the Conservative government from proceeding with their Kyoto plan.
It didn't change the government's policy, or cause them to rethink anything.
He embarrassed them for a day politically, but so what?
Looking at Monaghan's biography, it's clear this sort of gratuitous chaos is just his style.
He's a drummer with the punk band Suicide Pilots; he helped open an "anarchist" store in Ottawa called Exile Infoshop.
When he isn't taking a paycheque from the government, he is railing against it, and against order of any sort. That's what anarchists do.
Monaghan's press conference took aim at the whole concept of rule of law: "The irony of this case, and proposed charges against me," he said, "is the government of Canada is using the language of responsible process, due course, fulfilment of duty, and obedience to the law, as justification for their witch hunt against the lowest-ranking temp employee in the department; possibly the entire government excluding cleaning staff."
To most Canadians, that's called law and order.
To Monaghan, it's odious; and his self-deprecation as a low-level underling is some sort of excuse -- he's so small, he can't possibly be malevolent, no matter what he does.
But Monaghan is wrong. Leaking government plans about taxes, regulations and subsidies is wrong not only if you use that secret information to make a killing in the stock market. It's also wrong if it's used for political chaos. This wasn't a whistle-blowing bureaucrat -- where the government was breaking the law, as happened in the AdScam sponsorship scandal. This wasn't Watergate. This was a particular policy direction that Monaghan just didn't agree with.
The proper response to his disagreement on Kyoto was to accept his role as a civil servant, or to quit -- not to break his oath of loyalty and confidentiality. If Monaghan is charged and convicted of this leak, his utter lack of compunction -- and ideological loathing of any civil order -- ought to be held against him in sentencing.
.......
Revealing the obvious doesn’t count
By Lorrie Goldstein
Toronto Sun
Monday, May 14, 2007
Every whistleblower is different. Some are noble. Some brave. Some frightened.
Then there are the pompous jerks.
In this last category is whoever leaked a draft of Environment Minister John Baird’s regulatory framework on climate change last month, a few days before the minister publicly released it.
How do we know this person is a pompous jerk? Well, when environmentalists and journalists to whom the plan was leaked read stuff like: “Your source objects strongly to the secrecy of the Harper government for its continuous PR campaign and the abandonment of international standards for (greenhouse gas) reductions,” you know you’re dealing with a goof.
Is there a person in Canada who didn’t know long before the Tories announced it that they weren’t going to meet the Kyoto accord, which is what the reference to “international standards” meant?
If news the Conservatives weren’t going to comply with Kyoto was a state secret, it was probably a bad idea for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to say, for months, to anyone who would listen, that the Conservatives weren’t going to comply with Kyoto.
Sometimes, the timing of the release of secret information by a whistleblower is important, say in the interests of public safety, if not releasing the information immediately would endanger public safety.
But releasing regulations that were going to be released in a few days anyway, when everybody already knew in general terms what they would say?
No, somebody this dumb, and this gratuitously disloyal to their employer, doesn’t deserve the noble name of “whistleblower.”
Late last week, some low-level contract worker for Environment Canada who, when he wasn’t doing government work, helped run an anarchist bookstore, outed himself as a person who had been arrested (but not charged) by the RCMP in this case, and led out of his place of employment in handcuffs.
Then he started in on the Harper government with every lefty cliche in the book. But since he wouldn’t confirm or deny if he was the leaker, there’s nothing more to say.
Other than who the hell is doing the hiring at Environment Canada these days?
Jeff Monaghan's inspiration and/or self-image:
Since he doesn’t believe in a law based structured society, I guess we can all just walk into his bookstore and take what we like without paying, right?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
