Some Kid With a Computer Just Ruined the 2011 Budget

Move over Julian Assange. Russell Ullyatt may have done some serious damage to Canadian democracy with a single email.

Sun Media’s Warren Kinsella has an interesting take on the debate over WikiLeaks, which he says has not divided people so much along political lines as it has revealed “the yawning generational divide that runs through modern culture.” Kinsella contends that the people freaking out over WikiLeaks are mostly “old dinosaur[s]” who are “reacting with astonishment to the notion that an anarchic, anonymous coalition of computer-savvy people – kids, most of them – could actually bring … big governments to their knees.” Kinsella has a point here, in that relative youngsters have – in this case at least – adapted technology to their own anti-establishment uses more rapidly than their pro-establishment elders have erected defenses against them, but his analysis is insightful in more ways than he intends. Increasingly, Julian Assange et al. are looking like the petulant children in this scenario. They may be snickering right now at having egged the house of the old fogey next door, but they’ve hardly brought anything to its knees (the White House is still standing, after all) and someone more responsible is going to have to clean up the mess.

Which brings us to Canada’s own Assange wannabe, a little-known Conservative staffer named Russell Ullyatt who leaked a report by the Commons finance committee, prompting its members to agree to shelve their final report and leave the budget entirely in the hands of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. “Was this a case of a vast right-wing complot, a favour to friends, a case of kickback, or just someone who wanted to feel important for 15 minutes?” writes the National Post’s Tasha Kheiriddin. We in The Mark Newsroom hope to hear answers to questions like this soon, because this leak seems like a huge deal as it means the 2011 budget will not have the legally mandated input from opposition parties. “It is ironic that a government which claims it wants to listen to as many Canadians as possible when crafting the 2011 budget will now forego the input from hundreds of groups,” writes Kheiriddin. But “ironic” hardly seems the appropriate word. How about outrageous? Undemocratic? Unacceptable?