Politics and milk shouldn't mix
It leaves a sour taste
The pictures are on Twitter/X, Facebook, and local television.
Campaigning started in a by-election to find a new member of the provincial legislature and there’s Tom Osborne, former member of the House of Assembly and senior cabinet minister in Andrew Furey’s Liberal administration at the launch event for the Liberals’ candidate and going door to door with candidate Jamie Korab and Premier Andrew Furey.
Osborne shouldn’t be there.
Since early July, Tom has headed the agency set up by the provincial government to control making and selling milk, cheese, yogurt and other dairy products in the province. There’s also an egg marketing board and a chicken marketing board. Among other things, the milk marketing board - known these days as Dairy Farmers of Newfoundland and Labrador - sets the price for milk the same way the Public Utilities Board fixes gasoline prices in the province or electricity prices.
But unlike the PUB, which sets the maximum price only, the milk marketing board sets the *only* price retailers can charge consumers for prices. It also decides who can set up a dairy farm, where they can set it up, how much milk they can produce, and basically everything about making and selling dairy products. In his new job, Tom also runs the School Milk Foundation, the not-for-profit organization that provides milk to schools across Newfoundland and Labrador.
It’s a job where openly partisan activity like campaigning in an election is unheard of - well, unheard of until now - because it’s an agency set up by the government to regulate impartially every aspect of the dairy industry.
Like the chicken and egg marketing boards, the milk marketing board operates under the Farm Products Review Board. The review board is described in the Natural Products Marketing Act and the three marketing boards each have their own regulations that allow them to operate legally. The review board is a Category 3 government agency under the Transparency and Accountability Act, and its employees are - in the words of the Natural Products Marketing Act - “subject to the same terms and conditions of service as are applicable to employees of departments of government.”
As for the big board, so for the little board. The provincial government’s policy on public servants and partisan politics is set out in its Political Activity Policy. The reason for the policy is there in plain language even if the grammar is poor:
It is in the best interest of the public that Government services and programs be implemented and advice provided in a politically neutral manner. The Political Activity Policy addresses the need for a balance between employees’ rights to engage in political activities and the requirement for the provincial public service to be politically impartial.
Participation in political activities should not compromise or be perceived as compromising employees’ performance of their duties in an impartial manner. Consideration must be given to employees’ duties in the organization and the nature of the political activities in which they wish to participate.
While neither the review board nor the milk marketing board is a government department, the law makes it clear the boards and their employees are to work under the same principles. Fir extra help, there’s even a set of guidelines in the policy that make it easy for someone to figure out what the rules are. It's not rocket science.
Someone with Tom Osborne’s 28 years in the House and more than a decade as a cabinet minister should understand the nature of the board’s work and his role as general manager, the importance of impartiality, the problem of even the appearance of bias, and even where to find the rules that guide how he is supposed to work in his new job. If you look at the government’s own how-to instructions, any person could figure out Tom’s new job put him in what government’s policy would consider a politically restricted position. And they'd also see that partisan campaigning is not something he should be at.
As an employee of the marketing board, Tom’s *partisan* political activity would reflect on the board itself and retailers, manufacturers, and dairy farmers themselves might wonder about his and the board’s impartiality. That’s why the Natural Products Review Act restricts employees by putting them under the same rules of behaviour as the public service.
It’s not personal. It’s not about a specific person. Tim could be absolutely the most saintly of all saintly people but that’s not the point. The rules apply so that everyone can have confidence that people with government-approved power are not influenced improperly by partisan considerations when they make decisions. The rules don’t apply to some based on the fact that so-and-so is a good fella or c’mon b’y and apply to others because they are not. They are supposed to apply fairly, equitably, and impartially to all so the rest of us can be confident in the impartiality of the regardless of who has the job.
That partisan bias Tom is showing gets even more important and potentially more troublesome when the province’s dairy farmers legally control the provincial milk industry. When the dairy farm is owners were milk producers alone, that was one thing. All retailers - like the people who own brands like Central Dairies - were one group. The milk producers were another.
But now that the local dairy farm operators have also formed a co-operative in which the overwhelming majority owns another major brand - Central Dairies - any perception of bias and unfairness becomes all the more politically troublesome. They are now competitors with retailers. When their power to control the board comes with a partisan connection - real or perceived - to the party in power, you can imagine the problems that could create. Legally, only dairy farm owners in the province can elect members to the milk marketing board so there’s no representation for other manufacturers and their companies, like say Scotsburn from Nova Scotia, even indirectly. There's also no representation from retailers on the board.
In British Columbia, the problems with partisanship ate so important that BC Farm Products Review Board cautioned members of its milk board in the controversial 2017 election that if “commodity board members wish to make political donations, or engage in other politically partisan activities, they must do so in their personal capacities, and must of course do so in a fashion that does not undermine any reasonable perception of a member’s role as a responsible and objective industry regulator, or undermine the reputation of the commodity board.”
But that’s for the board members who, in British Columbia, like in Newfoundland and Labrador, are only dairy farmers elected only by the other dairy farmers in the province. Staff in this province, like staff elsewhere are supposed to live under more restrictive rules when it gives to partisan activity.
Osborne’s partisan activity could set a precedent, if it continues. For example, there’d be little to prevent the staff of the Public Utilities Board from being active partisans. Even commissioners - the people set your gas and electricity - could go door-knocking fir the government party or show up at golf tournaments or the annual Premier’s Dinner. After all, the Public Utilities Act only prohibits a commissioner from having an interest in an entity regulated by the PUB. And since it isn’t declared to be an agent of the Crown in the PUB Act the same way the Farm Products Review Board is, it would even easier for the PUB folks to play partisan politics like Osborne is doing.
The same could apply to the boards and staff of the self-regulating professions - law medicine, nursing, engineers, and so on - all of which carry on legal mandates from the provincial government to regulate professions in the public interest but there’s no specific law or other rule from government against partisan activity by board members let alone staff.
Same thing could happen at NALCOR, too and any of its subsidiaries. Imagine NALCOR boss Jennifer Williams running for the Liberals against Tony Wakeham in the next election while only taking a leave of absence and in the weeks ahead of time knocking doors in the district. Pick anything government does. If the government party doesn't enforce the rules because doing so works in its favour, they can get away with anything.
It’s not like we come across this situation before. Newfoundland and Labrador is a small province and if we blacklisted people for being involved in politics, there’d be no way to get anything done. That’s why collectively,we’ve respected boundaries about *partisan* political activity outside of open partisan politics. That is a distinction worth bearing in mind, by the way. There’s political activity like voting. Being partisan - support for or work on behalf of one party over others - is a whole different thing. Some people don’t understand the difference but it’s there and if we have lost that knowledge or if some people don’t have it, then we need to find it very soon. Otherwise, we are headed for really bigger oroblems.
There are all sorts of former partisans who go to work inside and outside government and in all these spaces that are in between without carrying on partisan activity. They do it because being partisan in their new job does not work for the reasons described in the government’s own policy. They can be politically aware. They can take part in some political activity like voting, including representing themselves or others in dealing with government. Their jobs involve dealing with government very often and being an active partisan can taint the relationship, especially if the issue is controversial. That's why in some jobs, being a political donor (even if you give to all equally) is problematic and is not something to do.
Tom Osborne brings a huge experience to his new job. It’s political experience. He knows how things work. That’s not knowledge the community as a whole should lose. Dairy farmers made a good choice in hiring him. But at the same time, neither the dairy farmers nor the province as a whole would lose any of the benefit of his skill and knowledge if in his new job, Tom got out of partisan politics full stop.
When he knocks doors for Jamie Korab and the Liberals, Tom opens the door for a lot more trouble for us all now and in the future. We know what that looks like, too. The Pea Seas under Danny Williams appointed active partisans to all sorts of jobs they should never have held, including the provincial chief electoral officer. Their decisions invariably favoured the party they supported even when the evidence went another way. One future candidate for the Pea Seas botched investigations that involved the government party and undertook others that were suspiciously oartidan.. There were political operatives who resigned during elections and then took up their high-paid public service jobs again right after. Failed candidates got plumb jobs and gave out expensive contracts to their political friends. The board of NALCOR was full of unqualified partisans and people in naked conflicts of interest who approved all sorts of bad ideas, including Muskrat Falls. There are endless examples of conflicts of interest from those dark yearswhich is ultimately what the rule against partisan activity in government jobs was supposed to prevent.
Doesn’t matter if Tom got approval from his board. Doesn’t matter if they never knew what he was doing. There’s no room for the “my dime, my time” argument either any more than there was when Andrew Furey tried to excuse his trip to John Risley’s fishing lodge on the grounds that there were times in the day when the rules didn’t apply to him.
Tom Osborne needs to get off the hustings for Jamie Korab or anyone else in this by-election or any other.
Period.
Whoever needs to take a decision to stop Osborne's improper partisan action - Furey, Korab, Osborne - can do so quickly. They need to do it quickly and publicly.
If they don't, the Pea Seas and the NDP have every right to make this improper action and the failure to stop the defining issue of a very important, very tight campaign.
It’s that simple.
Well it should be simple except around here these days, things that should be really obviously simple, aren’t.
Whatever happens none of the people in a position to stop this improper behaviour can say they didn't know now that it’s wrong.
Let’s see what happens now that everyone knows.