Public practice

By Robert Colapinto
Illustration: James Steinberg

It may be a fickle and volatile world, but who better than a CA to serve in the public sector where every policy and political decision eventuallycomes down to dollars and how best to use them?

"More than a few of my colleagues in the profession told me you gotta be nuts!" says Paul Szabo. It was 1993 and the 45-year-old CA was entering what his wife de- scribes as the big years, the moving years, a time when his career was ready to blossom. " ‘And what the hell do you do? she said. You leave your profession and go to a job that was paying, at the time, 60 grand a year.’ Oh boy," he says with a reminiscing groan.

After election to four terms as MP for Mississauga South with the ruling Liberal party, Szabo now finds himself sitting in opposition, having retained his seat in the recent federal election. A good run by any standard, with new challenges and no regrets for a man who had been on a fast-track position at TransCanada PipeLines Inc. Even in his earliest years with PriceWaterhouse & Co., he had felt that public service was his true calling. And Szabo is not alone. Over the past 20 years, a growing number of CAs have sought and won (as well as lost) runs at political office. Their highly specialized education, training and business acumen seem to have made them a hot commodity in a political arena driven more than ever by the nuts and bolts of sound fiscal policy and governance.

Although Szabo can’t say he was so calculating as to have actively sought a CA designation with a mind to one day running for office, he does admit he knew his CA would serve him well in this particularly fickle and volatile world. "It’s not just our financial expertise that is so valued by the system and the people it serves," says Szabo. "We bring a lot more to the table; though, I have to agree that virtually every policy, every political decision eventually comes down to dollars and how to best use them."

For Szabo, far more relevant for the aspiring political CA has been the profession’s long history of encouraging its CAs to get involved in the life of their communities. "From sitting on hospital boards, membership in volunteer organizations and charitable institutions, we have a proud tradition of giving of our time to society," he says.

"It’s this sense or need to participate in public service that makes so many of us a natural fit for politics," agrees MP Roy Cullen, CA, who was an active member of the United Way and Rotary International and chaired the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Appeal. Cullen, formerly a vice-president at Noranda Forest Group (now Norbord Inc.), joined Szabo on the Liberal benches representing Etobicoke North with his first win for the Liberal party in the 1996 by-election, prior to the party’s overwhelming sweep of the 1997 federal election (during which he was re-elected). He, too, survived the Conservative victory and was recently appointed the opposition critic for Natural Resources in the new Parliament.

And yet another CA has recently joined them to warm a seat for the diminished Liberal party. Vancouver’s Blair Wilson repelled the Conservative onslaught with his surprising victory in the riding of West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country. In Canada’s most populous riding, Wilson reversed a hard-fought loss in the 2004 campaign to eek out a win by less than 1,000 votes, ending the ultra-conservative region’s 32-year run under the PC/ Reform/Alliance banners.

Acclimatizing himself to the rarified atmosphere on the Hill will be no easy task, says Cullen. "When I was sitting in the House of Commons for the first time, it was awe-inspiring and humbling," he says. "It took a while to get comfortable; and I still get goosebumps when I walk along Wellington Street and look up at that Centre Block."

Cullen, a native Montrealer, had his first taste of politics when working on Jean Chrétien’s 1990 leadership campaign and later as assistant deputy minister for the British Columbia Ministry of Forests. "I simply got that itch that had to be scratched," he says. "My wife was al- so bowled over by the decision, but soon understood that I truly felt I could make some kind of difference."

Cullen’s CV is top-heavy with finance and governance-related postings. As out-going chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance, past parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Finance, and several dogged years in the trenches passing a private member’s bill that ensures transparency in the way the feds charge user fees, he has learned some hard lessons on how to get things done. "Building consensus, cultivating allies and knowing how and when to make your pitch is key to any success here," he says. "For some CAs, these may be foreign concepts, but for those of us who have worked in large private sector bureaucracies, it’s all very familiar."

According to Szabo, this no-man-is-an-island perspective is essential, but not without some frustration. The political policy-making process is often painfully slow for those used to the faster paced corner-office decisions made in the private sector.

This will likely be newbie Wilson’s greatest challenge. As founder of C.B. Wilson Chartered Accountants — a firm specializing in owner-managed small business needs — and presently expressing his own entrepreneurial bent as proprietor of two flourishing Vancouver eateries, Wilson may experience some initial frustration. "You want to be so hands-on, driving the thing," says Szabo. "But patience and allowing others to take the wheel with you to navigate an often long course is key.

"So you very carefully get your ducks in order for, say, a private member’s bill," he says, "find a consensus, be heard over the din of those who are pushing other agendas, vet the entire issue, and only then, can you hope to get it passed if you are in a minority position."

Top left to right: behind the scenes player David Amonson; Alberta Energy Minister Greg Melchin; Liberal MP Paul Szabo.
Bottom left: Liberal MP Roy Cullen; and right, former Prince Rupert, BC, mayor Don Scott

Most recently, in the last Parliament, the vice-chairman of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, Szabo — who also holds an MBA and BSc — has occupied a number of high-profile posts, from member of both the Health and Finance Committees to parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services. Yet, over the past 12 years he has been most active in introducing private member’s bills and motions he hopes will make a real and quantifiable difference in family and children’s issues. "One’s financial expertise is not so important in these areas," he says. "Pushing bills, framing issues, leading committees, standing in Parliament and speaking extemporaneously [for which Szabo is considered most expert], all require some time in the trenches."

Despite years of preparation for a life in public office — Szabo first ran and lost in 1980 — both Szabo and Cullen admit the learning curve on Parliament Hill has been rather steep. Understanding and adapting to the politics of politics is no easy thing, says Cullen. "It took a while to get comfortable just learning how to become a ‘politician,’ " he says. And by no means does he ascribe any pejorative connotation to this word. "Politics is a noble profession, if your sole intent is to the service of the public good," he says. "I can’t imagine having gone so far in the last decade without that as my impetus."

At the time of the vote of nonconfidence, Cullen was working the anti-terrorism beat as parliamentary secretary to then deputy prime minister Anne McLellan, the influential politico charged with running the nation’s Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. This and his longstanding involvement with a global initiative to fight the scourge of corruption and money-laundering offers a perspective on public service and the expertise of the CA he could not have imagined when he first entered the business world more than 30 years ago. "Applying the tools you perfected over so many years on such a large stage is just incredibly satisfying," says Cullen. "I now have the feel both for the politics of the politics — on a global scale — as well as the business smarts required to make those politics work. The level of contentment I feel and the drive I have to get up and get on with my work each day has been extraordinary."

For some politically minded CAs, a very public life can be fraught with treachery and disappointment. Don Scott was anything but a political animal when he was first tapped to run for mayor of Prince Rupert, BC. Still, he could not resist the assurances of the Pacific region’s savvy political machine that he was their best hope for the rejuvenation of the beleaguered port city. The city had fallen on hard times with its pulp mill teetering on bankruptcy and closure. Scott, a highly regarded private practitioner, was untarnished by the broken promises and failures of previous administrations. "I had no formal ties to the NDP, who had hoped to keep the mill open but were having trouble, or to the Liberals who wanted to shut it down," he says. "Some pretty influential people thought I’d be ideal, given that I had a head for business and came in with so little political baggage."

Scott had been a past president of the Prince Rupert Chamber of Commerce and successfully ran the airport authority and its transition from federal to municipal control. His presidency of the local Rotary club also gave him an entrée to powerful movers and shakers of the region’s political and economic elite. It was pretty heady stuff, he admits, to be lauded as the can-do guy for a city on the verge of catastrophe. Scott won the mayoral race handily in 1999 and right off the bat, his tenure was fraught with challenges. The provincial Liberals came to power and promptly abandoned support of the ailing mill. "My CA background helped in working with the municipality to try to finance its saving," he recalls, "and some people respected my integrity and accepted that I had a better idea than most of the financial mechanics of the problem." But the mill was doomed and Scott embarked on a tumultuous ride from 1999 to 2002, trying to bring life back to the embattled city.

"I found the whole experience pretty cutthroat," he says, recalling how his political allies drifted away and his enemies moved in for the kill during the 2002 municipal election. "Some pretty well-timed newspaper headlines days before the vote did me in," he says with some bitterness. "I had been leading in the advance polls before all the mud slinging. I must say I was a real neophyte as far as all that was concerned," he says. In the end, Scott lost by a mere 18 votes. Although retired from public practice — he sold his practice in 1999 — he remains active in the community. He was named to the Priddle panel, an advisory panel put together to gather the views of BC residents on offshore oil and gas development.

David Amonson, FCA, finds these rough and tumble political machinations disheartening, yet unavoidable even for the most grizzled veteran. He was a founding member of the Reform Party of Canada back in 1987 and is no stranger to the backstabbing, betrayal and disillusionment that is part and parcel of political life. "Unfortunately, that’s the game a lot of them play," he says. "Too many of our politicians come in predisposed to serving their constituency, but fall prey to this politics-for-politics’-sake internal strife. In the end, they get far less accomplished than we, the people, expect from them."

With the dissolution of Reform, Am-onson preferred to work more behind-the-scenes for its successor, Stephen Harper’s Canadian Alliance Party. When not focusing his energy on work as a principal in a Calgary-based public accounting firm, his political interest leans more to the CA’s forte of critical thinking and analysis. As the author of the book Towards Improving Canada, Amonson uses his professional expertise to champion reform initiatives for simplifying the Canadian tax system. "In my case, it’s the development of policy initiatives," he says. "And for my party, it’s finding solutions for those we feel have been left out of the decision-making process." From Reform to Canadian Alliance to the amalgamation of the latter and the Progressive Conservative Party into Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada, Amonson remains committed to maintaining Reform’s original western-based Conservative platform. "Despite the dramatic changes, it is quite a time to be a part of the political world," he says.

Yet Amonson believes a CA designation can actually be more detriment than advantage for some. "In a sense, I find that the CA experience limits you, because you try to do what you were taught, which is to be straightforward, fair-minded and thorough," he says. "Managing the art of the impossible, and the media, etc., we as CAs don’t have to respond to as many changes" as politicians do. Scott says he is a testament to the outsider trying to do good who was simply not prepared for the political cut and thrust when times got tough. "I’m prepared now, but back then, I really didn’t have the armor to protect myself," he says. Bitter infighting within the business world was one thing, he recalls. It was almost always visible in its skirmishes for recognition, power and turf. Similar struggles in politics, Scott believes, tend to be more subtle and internecine as competing interests vie to topple each other and their agendas.

"It’s such a different world," says Szabo. "You can actually be attacked for pursuing the betterment of this profession." For some time now, Szabo has decried the unseemly behaviour most Canadians view as de rigueur during question period. Oddly, Szabo would actually like to get something accomplished during these often-inelegant sessions, rather than just present an opportunity for some members to get a little face time on television. "There’s a lot of stuff that’s said and done in the House that’s not up to a business level," he says. "You certainly wouldn’t get away with it in the corporate world. They can say some awful things, building themselves up by tearing others down. This has always been foreign to me coming from my background." But to criticize one’s own is to threaten accusations of putting on airs of superiority. "But all I want, like so many other members," he says with some heat, "is to get some work done."

For his part, Scott refuses to sink to the level of those who might have dethroned his 2002 candidacy. "It really was about improving the lot of constituents and getting on with the work," he says. "So I could never have employed the tactics of those who opposed me."

Amonson believes his point is proved by such high-minded approaches to the political imbroglio. He is convinced that CAs have an ingrained integrity born over years of training and professional practice that is quite incompatible with certain political fights. "Let’s face it," he says, "this is a profession founded on ethics and credibility, and as such, it can be quite a strain for those who find themselves thrust into that occasional tussle in the muck." The most damaging battles for political CAs, he believes, are those that result in a lack of clarity in hard-won policies and programs. "By obscuring an issue, you simply promote the creation of greater and more expensive bureaucracies designed to combat the confusion," he says.

It is the CA’s natural inclination to strive for a plain-speaking simplification of complex issues and not to unnecessarily complicate the political or business world, according to Amonson. To promote the latter, he says, is to invite the blurring of people’s true needs as well as the real-world costs of governance. "This is where our training and experience is of some good," he says. "All citizens know that the bills are eventually going to come in, but a bloated bureaucracy obscures the financial and social price we all have to pay."

Translating government policies into hard dollar costs and benefits has been the particular expertise of Greg Melchin, Progressive Conservative MLA for Calgary North-West since 1997. The province’s energy minister is at the helm of one of the most powerful and moneyed portfolios in the country. His mission is to manage that wealth befitting a CA who had devoted more than 20 years to a career in financial and business administration. "In Canadian politics you can’t find a better place to be right now than energy minister," he says. "But it’s also a very weighty and humbling position, for I know that given the majority government we have here, one always has to be wary of how that power is wielded."

Melchin, like Scott, was wooed into politics at a time when many of the challenges of his business life had been met or exceeded. After seven years as vice-president of nationwide commercial real estate concern Torode Realty Ltd., Melchin was hungry for a new start. "I just said why not," he says, still slightly startled by his plunge into the unknown. "And then I just barely won the nomination, and before I knew it, it was ‘Gee, what have I done? There’s my name on the ballot; I’ve set these wheels in motion and now what?’ " Next was a landslide victory for the PCs and Melchin’s rise, primarily within a number of increasingly influential finance portfolios.

Prior to his selection as energy minister, Melchin reached the fiscal pinnacle with his posting as Minister of Revenue and vice-chair of the Standing Policy Committee on Economic Development and Finance. "Clearly, I had been typecast, and rightly so, I suppose. If there is anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that we need a heck of a lot more politicians with financial and business backgrounds," he says. Not that he thinks poorly of the many lawyers who populate the country’s cabinets and backbenches. "It’s just that as our world gets more complex, the legalese of our legislation starts to be far less important than the nuts and bolts of how we control and use the taxpayer’s money."

Melchin makes no bones about his perception of how today’s governments are organized and where their focus should lie. "They’re huge corporations really," he says, "with billions and billions of dollars running in and out of their coffers every year." Without a level-headed bureaucracy and elected CEOs, all could go to hell in a handbasket, he says.

Although somewhat apart from Amon-son politically, Melchin also frets about inefficient, out-of-touch bureaucracies and the potential for abuse of power. He likes to consider himself more as a facilitator of the people’s needs, rather than an omnipotent decision-maker who knows all and will, as he sees fit, dole out the goodies to his minions. "Especially in a majority government, you have to take great care when considering what has been entrusted to you by the actual stakeholders of this wealth — the people," he says. "I just facilitate and put the right structures in place that help catalyze people’s natural urge to grow and prosper."

"The number of times I’ve had members stand in the House and say, ‘Well, I know the member is a CA and he understands this stuff,’ is pretty often," says Szabo. In many ways, he finds this recognition to be quite the compliment, "but in others, it’s kind of scary because we don’t, in fact, have all the answers, and shouldn’t." Szabo and Cullen know their limits. "There are certain expectations we can’t avoid," Cullen says. "As an effective MP, you’ve got to pick your niche, and a CA will do that."

And always lurking is the quagmire of political expedience and diluting compromise, a perversion common to both worlds, but of far more import to the well- being of the people whose trust lies with these converted CAs. "We all come in with lofty notions of making a difference," says Szabo. "The challenge is to stick to our guns and not betray that trust."

Robert Colapinto is a Toronto-based freelance writer.