bureaucrats who “disregard the law” through mismanagement don’t appear to suffer any consequences such as losing their jobs.

With everything else going on, this will probably get buried. I think Justice John Gomery is saying what most Canadians know and want changed.

Gomery told a Treasury Board official at the sponsorship inquiry he couldn’t find any evidence in the Financial Administration Act allowing managers to weed out bad seeds in the bureaucracy.

“Sometimes you get people who just, more or less deliberately, disregard the law,” the judge told Stephen Wallace, a top official at the Treasury Board secretariat.

“There have been, it seems to me, well-documented instances of mismanagement . . . and I didn’t see that they had any consequences on the employment of anybody.

Anyone following this know problems are systemic. And these answers aren’t good enough.

Wallace said it’s not clear to him just how many bureaucrats are suspended or turfed out for wrongdoing, because the information is complied on a department-by-department basis.

“Because it’s being done at a decentralized level, it’s tough to get that picture.”

Wallace was among a panel of public-service managers who appeared before Gomery to explain what has changed in government since Prime Minister Paul Martin shut down the scandal-plagued sponsorship program in 2003.

The responses were mixed.

Wallace said plans are in the works for tighter financial controls, better training for managers with signing authority as well as more detailed audits.

But government-wide training courses, including those ensuring bureaucrats know the law, have yet to be implemented, said Wallace.