Don Lenihan is Vice President, Engagement at the Public Policy Forum in Ottawa, Canada. He is an internationally recognized expert on democracy and public engagement, accountability and service delivery, with over 25 years of experience in the field. He is the author of numerous articles, studies and books. Don’s latest book, Rescuing Policy: The Case for Public Engagement, is published by the Public Policy Forum.

Watching the F-35 spectacle is like watching a plane wreck in slow motion. The file has been crashing for two years now and, as it finally slams into the ground, the lesson for ministers is very clear: Secrecy is your enemy, transparency is your friend.

When ministers are assigned a new portfolio, they often know almost nothing about the files they’re assuming. No one should expect them to. They may come from one of any number of backgrounds. This lack of expertise carries a risk.

Purchasing a fleet of fifth-generation fighter jets, for example, is an extremely complex and technical task. On files like this, expert advice not only informs policy, it usually drives it. For a minster who may not know a cockpit from a wing flap, this can be a challenge.

While bureaucrats, lobbyists and vendors may call themselves advisors, too often they turn out to be the real decision-makers on the file. There’s a term for this in policy circles: capture. If the reports are right, the F-35 story looks like a textbook case.

It’s not clear when officials from the Department of National Defence decided the F-35 was their first choice, but by mid-2008 they were already arguing that it was the only real option for Canada. By mid-2009 they were pressing the government to sole-source the purchase, at a price tag of $16 billion over 20 years.

As we all know, the government signaled its intention to proceed and then stoutly resisted calls to provide the public with any supporting information. In March 2011 the government was found in contempt of Parliament, and the election followed. The Conservatives campaigned on the issue and the numbers, returned with a majority, and the rest is history.

But if the government was convinced way back in 2008-09 that the F-35 was the only real option for Canada, why didn’t it just hand over the files then? If the research was that compelling, why all the secrecy?

The likeliest answer seems to be capture. Defence Minister Peter MacKay — who is neither a fighter pilot nor an aeronautical engineer — was captured by his advisors. He, in turn, captured cabinet.

Secrecy plays a big role in capture. It is supposed to give the inner circle (and the government) a critical advantage over opponents. If your opponents know what you know, they can challenge you on it, perhaps publicly. If the issues at stake rest on technical knowledge and expertise — as in the case of the F-35 file — there is always a risk that your opponents’ analysis will be better than yours, or that they might be better at persuading others that it is. If they win, you lose.

Secrecy counters this. It positions the inner circle for battle and helps ensure they are in control of the process.

Ministers and advisors alike find this kind of argument convincing and reassuring. For ministers, however, it has a fatal flaw. The minister’s role in the policy process is fundamentally different from that of the advisors. Ministers must account publicly for their decisions.

In practice, this means they must answer to the public on the file. But the less information there is available publicly to support a minister’s position, the more suspicious and confusing the minister’s story will sound. When there is no public information, the minister is left fumbling to explain why all the studies the government finds so convincing can’t be shared with the public.

The only option left for such a minister is to go on the attack, trying to divert attention through obfuscation, half-truths, innuendo, name-calling … sound familiar?

If the F-35 fiasco has a political lesson, it’s this: neither the minister nor the government benefit from this kind of policy-making. If anyone benefits, it is the inner circle. It consolidates their position as the experts and increases their influence over the minister.

If you’re a captured minister, you’re incapable of seeing that, as a minister, your interests are different from the inner circle and are best served by openness: a well-designed, transparent and legitimate process.

Such a process shields a minster from criticism, assigns the task of vetting complex issues to a representative range of experts, and is far more likely to lead to a decision that is widely seen as both legitimate and sound.

None of this compromises the government’s leadership on the issue. On the contrary, the government gets credit for having made the issue a priority and the minister for having led a process that resulted in a good decision. Minister of Public Works Rona Ambrose’s National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy is an example of this kind of policy-making.

In sum, it is very hard to see why the government chose the path it did on the F-35 file. In doing so, it seems only to have made itself a target for the opposition, cast doubt on its own motives, backed itself into a corner on options and costs, and wound up looking incompetent.

And all this, it seems, because of a misguided belief that secrecy was a better way to make policy than openness and transparency. (Not every transparent process is well designed, of course, but let’s leave that for another day.)

So what has the government learned from this? The signals are mixed.

On files like the environment or the new rules on foreign investment the government seems to be moving away from the use of public processes, and giving ministers more flexibility and responsibility to make complex decisions.

If ministers think this is a good thing — that it enhances their role — they should be careful what they wish for. Ultimately, it saddles them with the responsibility of explaining enormously complex decisions to an increasingly angry and impatient public. Ministers beware.

On the other hand, the government took an encouraging and important step when it set up the F-35 secretariat in Public Works. It seemed to be signaling that it wants to reposition the whole file. Perhaps it will give Canadians — and itself — a well-deserved Christmas present by launching a process everyone can feel good about.

The ball is in your court, Ms. Ambrose.

To view other columns by Don Lenihan, click here.

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