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There is no better way for politicians to avoid accountability for their decisions than to allow civil servants to be scapegoated for government screw-ups

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Candidates for the federal Conservative leadership have until June 3 to sign up new members; at that point, almost three months before the actual election date, the result may be more or less baked in. Pierre Poilievre must hope thats true not just because he seems to be the prohibitive favourite, but because his war with Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem over Canadas inflation rate may well be unsustainable.

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Few of us understand monetary policy or have any interest in cryptocurrency, which is another of Poilievres niche interests. Poilievres campaign seemed to want to wink at people who do, without upsetting anyone else. But there has been no shortage of pushback, including from within the party.

Poilievre supporters will dismiss Ed Fasts resignation as Conservative finance critic this week as the petulance of a Jean Charest supporter, and not, as Fast claims, a reasonable response to attempts to muzzle his defence of independent central banking around the finance table. (Fast is the co-chair of Charests campaign.) But Fast is relatively well known and reasonable a good Tory soldier, a former Harper cabinet minister, and not from Toronto, Ottawa or Montreal. As arcane as monetary policy might be, the general principle of central-bank independence shouldnt be hard to defend: If theres one thing we should want to wall off from politicians panicky, self-interested, quotidian concerns, surely its the currency. A government seeking re-election would have every incentive to reduce interest rates, for example, deal with the long-term consequences later (if at all).

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Intuitive as that argument is, it may not make a dent in the leadership campaign. But it certainly could in a general election campaign. Poilievres cryptocurrency gambit could be another severe vulnerability in that respect too. At almost the very moment in late March that he suggested Canadians might opt out of inflation with crypto, Bitcoin and Ethereum began their nearly 40-per-cent collapse. Its a Liberal attack ad ready to happen. (The smart money, of course, is on Poilievre winning the leadership by hook or by crook, then beetling immediately to the centre and disappointing all his revolution-minded supporters. But that too would be a severe liability. Surely it can only happen so often within Canadas Conservative movement before it begins to fall apart.)

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I wonder, too, if the Poilievre team has miscalculated somewhat in making things so personal. Ed Fast and Jean Charest would have no problem firing a waitress or welder for not doing their jobs. But they wont do the same for a big-shot banker whose failures have cost our people a fortune, Poilievre said in a populism-by-numbers statement after Fasts departure.

Its not unprecedented: Former Bank of Canada governor James Coyne was Canadian Presss Newsmaker of the Year in 1961 for his open war with then finance minister Donald Fleming. But that was 60 years ago. Its not as if only Canada is dealing with inflation just at the moment: Canadas 6.8 per cent in April was below the G20 and OECD averages of 7.9 per cent and 8.8 per cent, respectively. That doesnt help anyone put food on the table, but nor do knee-jerk terminations.

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Its not that prominent civil servants should be off-limits for criticism. Indeed, one of the salutary benefits of the pandemic was to knock some sense into those of us with an unhealthy post-SARS instinct to make heroes of public health officials. Faced with the most serious crisis of their careers, many of our chief public health officers failed miserably in their most basic job: Communicating and justifying public-health measures to the population.

So, there is nothing wrong in theory with longshot Conservative leadership candidate Roman Baber criticizing Dr. Theresa Tam, for example or even to say he would try to fire her as prime minister. Tams pandemic record is that of downplaying the risk to Canada and casting aspersions on those who disagreed, until it was too late even to delay COVID-19s arrival at our borders. Having changed her mind on border controls or more likely having pretended to change her mind under political pressure she quickly set about rubbishing the sort of rapid-antigen tests that other countries were using. Her departments failures to coordinate with border officials are the stuff of legend. She has not been good at her job.

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But reading about Baber this week, it occurred to me that his intervention actually makes Tam more secure in her job because no Liberal government would want to be seen capitulating to such populist rabble-rousing. Thats not great in itself: Just because Baber thinks Tam should be fired doesnt mean she shouldnt be. But in the longer term and broader view, allowing civil servants to be scapegoated for government screw-ups would be a politicians dream and a detriment to democracy: There is no better way for politicians to avoid accountability for their decisions. When the next federal election comes along, no matter whos leading the Conservatives, there should be more than enough decisions on the Liberal record to make attacking individual bureaucrats wholly unnecessary.

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