Once again, Nova Scotia’s John Hamm government, caught doing something fishy in a dark corner, has ‘fessed up, faced the music and promised to change its ways. This tactic usually douses the controversy, leaves the opposition flapping in mid-air, and we all move on.

But in the recent case of the bonuses — $1.1 million of taxpayers’ money — paid to top bureaucrats, we should not move on so fast. After much resistance, the government has given in and promised to haul the whole business out into the open — a business rife with “secrecy, cover-ups and conflicts of interest,” in the possibly apt words of NDP justice critic Kevin Deveaux.

Openness gets us over a big hump, but it still doesn’t answer the big questions: Why are these bonuses given at all and what are the principles on which they’re given? Are there criteria of any kind, or is it a seat-of-the pants thing (it certainly looks like it) that hints at the old-style politics?

The issue is important because it touches directly on the matter of public confidence in government — which we’ve been trying to rebuild in this province since we hit rock bottom — and in leadership generally. Distrust of authority, both public and private, is rampant throughout North America. The question of who gets the cash up top at the expense of taxpayers and investors, and how they get it, is at the core of these suspicions.

In the public sector, we need only cock our ear to the proceedings of the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal to realize the brazen reach of outrageous greed. In the private sector, there’s the recent example of Paul Tellier, CEO of Bombardier Inc. for only two years — during which time the company’s fortunes went down — walking away with a settlement of nearly $6 million plus a $336,000-a-year pension for life. “It’s commensurate with what the market deems appropriate for a CEO who leaves his duties,” says a Bombardier spokesman in a casual acceptance of larcenous practice as the norm.

Premier Hamm’s own relaxed view of the Nova Scotia bonuses is that “we are paying people to do a good job because it’s worth it to the people of Nova Scotia to have a good job done,” and “I believe in it.”

But on the ground, the view is pretty well the opposite, underlining the chasm between rulers and the ruled. I think you’ll find that in the public mind, the bonuses are almost automatically linked to the culture of greed rampant across the land, to an aristocracy of money serving itself with taxpayers’ and small investors’ cash.

The usual explanation is that bonuses must be paid to keep top people from skipping off to higher-paying jobs, notably in the private sector, which is driving all this. There’s something unpleasant about that argument. It sounds like the notion that we have to pay industries to settle or stay in Nova Scotia, and there’s a hint of caving in to a subtle blackmail.

But perhaps, too, John Hamm is right — maybe, all things considered, we are getting value for money. Personally, I have no idea. I wish I did.

What I suggest is that we have a chance to straighten this out and come out with a positive result, which is why I say we should hang on to the issue. Straightening this out is one of those things a small jurisdiction may be able to do better than a big one. In the big jurisdictions, there’s an avalanche of laws, rules and regulations, plus a whole industry of “business ethics” that have sprung up to damp down the culture of grasping — but, as the Telliers of this world indicate, with mixed results so far.

What I mean by a positive result is that, having now got the bonuses on the public record, the next step should be to get a grip, in a way the public can relate to, on whether bonuses are justified, on what the criteria are, on who should get them, and on who makes the decision to give them. This is the next job for the opposition, and the duty of government to co-operate.

I realize that for deputy ministers and other high officials, it’s always embarrassing to have your financial particulars spread all over. But a frank discussion of this, including what the role of deputy minister is — and, admittedly, running a big, politically sensitive department like Health, Education or Social Services takes a special breed — might at least do something to shed some light on the too-mysterious business of government. That, at least, is owed to the voting citizen.