Skip to content

Morton disqualifies self

Frederick Lee “Ted” Morton, one of the authors of the “Firewall” letter to then-premier Ralph Klein, is holding forth to be your next premier, to protect you from the right-wing extremism of the Wildrose Alliance.
Our_View_March_2009
Array

Frederick Lee “Ted” Morton, one of the authors of the “Firewall” letter to then-premier Ralph Klein, is holding forth to be your next premier, to protect you from the right-wing extremism of the Wildrose Alliance.

He also writes departmental emails under a nom de plume that cannot be traced under Freedom of Information requests, has the paper copies shredded, and the email archives of his staff erased.

And this, we are told, is the voice of “open and transparent” government under his brand of Progressive Conservative leadership.

Except, as most of us have probably discovered to our chagrin, you can’t delete everything.

Copies of correspondence that Morton either sent or received as Frederick Lee (the first and second names on Morton’s U.S. birth certificate) were leaked to CBC. They pertain to policy discussions held while he was minister of sustainable resources.

One, posted for all to see on the Internet, talks of policies around the land rights of Metis people. The first line says: “Please forward to Morris and whomever else needs to see it.” Well, that ought to include Metis people and the rest of us, don’t you think?

The point he discusses seems rather minor: Morton says he doesn’t believe Metis people really want the responsibilities and obligations of “private ownership” of their traditional lands, although they do want the benefits. (If he wanted to verify those beliefs he could ask them — in public.)

That’s quite beside the point of why this email — and who knows how many others — disqualifies Morton from being premier.

When you’re the boss, the buck stops with you. Klein understood that and took all the flak that went with it. Ask Ed Stelmach if he ever hid behind a nom de plume while discussing government business.

When staff were first introduced to Frederick Lee, the department’s communication director explained why their boss would use a moniker other than his own.

Derrick Forsythe, a former staff member at Sustainable Resources, said: “She informed us that if you see an email with the moniker Frederick Lee, not to worry about it, it was just the minister using that email when (our emphasis) he didn’t want people to know it was him doing the writing.”

That contrasts quite sharply with a statement from his media spokesman Sam Armstrong, who says every minister has a separate internal email to communicate with colleagues and senior bureaucrats on sensitive issues.

Really?

It’s one thing to have different email accounts when you’re a minister. One might be designated as strictly for internal use and have safeguards built around it. Perfectly understandable. Stelmach has said he has one.

But you don’t set out to obscure the source. Armstrong says everyone in the department knew Frederick Lee was in fact Ted Morton.

But they probably didn’t know their email archives would be erased, and all copies of Frederick Lee’s authorship shredded so no Freedom of Information request could ever be made about what Morton was saying, planning, telling his staff to do — or just philosophizing.

The CBC contacted Michel Drapeau, a lawyer with expertise in accessing government documents. He said Armstrong’s explanation insults people’s intelligence.

He’s never seen a minister use a nom de plume to conduct official government business. Not to mention destroying it all when he resigned as a cabinet minister to run for party leadership.

This shows Morton does not understand what “open and honest” government really means. You might negotiate in private rooms, in unrecorded discussions. But you sign what you write — with your full name. And you don’t shred it all later.

Frederick Lee Morton’s actions demonstrate he is not worthy to lead the Progressive Conservative party and he’s not worthy of being your premier.

Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.