Two Canadian icons founder in choppy waters    

Toronto Star, September 04, 2004

By KELLY TOUGHILL

Sable Island is one of the most romantic places on earth: a windswept spit of sand far out in the North Atlantic where wild horses thunder over dunes of summer grass and nuzzle through snow for cranberries each winter. The island has become a national symbol for our collective attachment to a harsh landscape that is cold, isolated — and still wonderfully untamed.

Bluenose II is another romantic bit of Canadiana, and a long-time repository of national pride. The black-hulled schooner is a replica of the sleek fish boat that repeatedly trounced American yachts in blue-water racing almost a century ago. Those long-dead Canadian sailors had neither the resources nor the toys of their better-equipped competitors, but made up for it with experience, common sense and hard work.

Both the island and the sailboat are icons of Canadian identity, tangible evidence of the things Canadians hold most dear.

Both are also in trouble, quickly becoming symbols of something else entirely: the folly of the headlong rush to privatization that seized hold of most levels of governments over the last decade. Both icons are owned by the public and run by private, non-profit organizations. Now, the charitable groups set up to run these public treasures appear to be crumbling. Neither may be operating within a year.

How did things get this way? The problems seem obvious, in retrospect. This isn't a case of corruption or conflict of interest. Both groups are run by dedicated volunteers who spend a lot of private time on this public business, with no compensation and less glory, but also with no training, no oversight and not enough funding.

The real question now is what to do next.

The off-loading of Sable Island by the federal government was part of Paul Martin's grand plan as finance minister to kill the federal deficit. Martin sold, shut and privatized every government service and asset he could.

Sable Island is an important weather station that is integral not only to the study of climate, but of worldwide pollution. It is also an important base for scientists studying seals, sea birds and other parts of the natural world. The base is also a rescue station (more than 1,000 ships have foundered on its sandy shoals) and is used by crews on a nearby natural gas platform. All this is supported by a station with a rotating crew of just four people.

No one questions the quality of Martin's goal, but Sable appears to have been a victim of the speed of his fiscal revolution. The Sable Island Preservation Trust was set up lickety-split, under an agreement with the federal government that arranged basic funding for five years and called for the trust to raise enough money from Sable-lovers to help pay for basic operations.

One example of how loopy the plan was: its governance structure guarantees no accountability of the board. Right now, there are only 100 paid-up members of the trust. Members elect the board, but the board must approve any new applications for membership. See the problem?

April Hennigar is the president. She says the goal of involving the community in the management of the island was — and is — a lofty one, but admits that the actual plan didn't work.

Two years ago, the trust issued layoff notices to island staff, unsure if it would have enough money to meet payroll. Now, the trust is renegotiating the founding agreement signed five years ago with the federal government.

"The initial agreement is not workable," Hennigar says.

Bluenose II is owned by the people of Nova Scotia, but loved from coast to coast.

The replica of the famous fishing schooner was rotting at the dock when a trust was created to take it over a decade ago. In many ways, the trust, headed by Senator Wilfred Moore, did an excellent job. The ship was restored and her creamy sails now brighten ports up and down the East Coast each summer.

But no one at the Nova Scotia government was paying any attention to how the famous ship was actually run. The trust never filed audited statements. When it was caught up in the sponsorship scandal last spring, it had trouble accounting for some of the federal money spent on the ship.

More troubling was a lawsuit the trust filed against a T-shirt company using the Bluenose name. The move offended almost everyone in Nova Scotia, where the name is so common that Nova Scotians themselves are referred to as "Bluenosers."

The province, which owns the ship, told the trust to drop the lawsuit. The trust refused, and the province intervened in court. In December, the trust finally dropped its copyright claim against the T-shirt company and agreed, in writing, to a transition team that would look at a new governance system for the ship.

That was nine months ago. The transition team still hasn't been set up, no terms of reference established. The only thing the province will say is that "consensus could not be reached."

The province may own the Bluenose II, but apparently has no control over who or what manages it. Premier John Hamm seems content to wait until its current agreement with the trust runs out next April before seizing control of the Nova Scotia namesake.

The great thing about government control of public assets is accountability. When staff don't get paid, there is a minister who is responsible for fixing it — and the minister is responsible to the public. That isn't true when private non-profit groups take over public assets.

Neither Sable Island nor Bluenose II was pillaged in these deals, but both deserve better than they got, deserved more careful consideration from the elected officials whose job it is to guard such public treasures.

The real tragedy will be if no lessons are learned from these experiments in privatization, if the same mistakes are made over and over again.