Ed, I'll accept what you say about your own experience of the independence of Royal Commissions. However, many Commissions in this country are just excuses to kick a problem into the long grass and the members of the Commission (or at least a majority plus, importantly, the Chairman) can be expected to do so, sooner or later. In short, they've become useful devices for evasion, not genuine attempts at solutions.
Keith At 10:22 08/02/03 -0500, you wrote: >Hi Keith, > >I'll just comment on one of the points you made. More later. > >> I'm sorry, but Commissions appointed by governments (advised by civil >> servants) can never be guaranteed to be independent. Some may turn out to >> be, but many more (at least in our experience) are likely not to be >because >> there are too many potential honours and rewards available for those who >> take part. At the very least, there should be no ex-politicians or retired >> civil servants involved. A Commission is more likely to be independent if >> its members come from a quite different career stream -- such as academia >> or business. > >I was a full time staff member of one of our Commissions, a Commission of >Inquiry on the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, headed by Tom Berger, a >Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia and a former politician. >Rest assured that we were independent of government almost to the point of >being at war with Ottawa. I've also worked for another Commission, the >Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Again, I saw no evidence of >dependence on government or of the Commissioners seeking "honours and >rewards". However, it may be that the Canadian practice and experience is >different from that of the UK. > >Ed > > > >Ed Weick >577 Melbourne Ave. >Ottawa, ON, K2A 1W7 >Canada >Phone (613) 728 4630 >Fax (613) 728 9382 > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
