Concensus on corruption: political corruption appears all too commonplace.

The other day a fellow by the name of Mario Pepin was sentenced to two years less a day along with a $400.00 fine for defrauding the federal government of something north of $400,000. He and his colleague Paul Lemire used a secret bank account to defraud a local business group by giving themselves various credit cards and salaries from some kind of federal grant scam.

Mr Pepin's lawyer said "Look, everybody knew what was going on, give him a break since he had to sell his house since all this unfortunate stuff came up."

Oh, Mr. Pepin was a federal liberal organizer, whatever that means, in the prime minister's federal riding of Shawinigan. Time does not permit a recitation of the multitude of criminal investigations going on in the prime ministers riding.

The most interesting word in the whole report is that Mr. Pepin, who had been convicted a few weeks earlier, was shaken by his sentence. Imagine, he was shaken. Not as shaken as local radio show callers who were outraged that you could steal $400,000 and be fined $400, but all the same shaken. I guess he was shaken because this business of stealing taxpayers dollars has become so commonplace he might reasonably wonder what all the fuss was about.

Apparently most Canadians agree with him. Let me ask you this. When was the last time 69% of Canadians agreed on anything? Certainly not birth control or immigration or sovereignty in Quebec. Sixty nine per cent of Canadians agree it would seem that federal and provincial political systems are corrupt. This little survey conducted by Leger Marketing said 69 per cent of respondents felt the federal system was highly, or somewhat, corrupt, compared with 26 per cent who thought it was not very corrupt or not at all corrupt. One might legitimately ask what those 26 per cent were smoking, but that is not the topic of the day.

I remember spending time in Mexico and wondering what it must be like to live where a bribe of one kind or another seemed to be involved in everything from renting a car to going horseback riding.

I truly do not know how much worse it is today than say 30 years ago. I just know that today it seems to be everywhere and yesterday it seemed not to be.

I know that every provincial government in Ontario in the last 30 years has had its problems, usually surrounding developers of one kind or another where the serious money lurks. Where there is big money there is often trouble. So what happens when we stop being shocked?

Some people do not try anymore. A road builder does not compete for a contract because he knows it is fixed. The price goes up, the quality goes down.

Others realize to be successful they must bribe. It is the way of the world. It diminishes them. Sometimes they know it. Sometimes they do not. Sometimes they are shaken when they are found out because somewhere along the road their values deteriorated so far and so fast they had not realized that what they thought was just business as usual was really criminal.

Have you noticed what is going on the in the accounting profession? Have you noticed the demise of respect for Southam newspapers? Have you noticed the court case with the former Premier of British Columbia? Have you noticed who Paul Martin was taking money from and giving money to in Calgary? Ditto Sheila Copps.

Have you noticed our new ambassador to Denmark? Have you noticed the prime minister's new planes and the bucket of rust the Navy must fly. Have you noticed the Alliance MPs who championed pension reform and who signed up a year later?

Have you noticed the Wall street analysts who are squirming in their seats as it becomes obvious they sold their soul and recommended stocks to you and I that they knew were dogs? Have you noticed why? Have you noticed the stock price of Nortel and the clever exit of its former chairman? My guess is that about 70 per cent of you have.

Michael Atkins is the president of Laurentian Publishing.