While the Commons' justice committee may have voted to end their investigation into the Double-Hyphen Affair, Conservatives in the Senate are hoping that they can start their own committee investigation into the matter. The problem, however, is convincing enough of the Independent senators to vote along with them to do so. This while Senator Peter Harder, the Leader of the Government in the Senate err, "government representative" is doing his best to stymie the motion and insist that the Ethics Commissioner's look into the Affair will be enough for everyone involved. Oh, and throughout this, the Senate's Order Paper crisis isn't going away.
The motion, tabled by the Conservative senate leader, Senator Larry Smith, would have the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee hold its own hearings on the matter, invite a list of witnesses, including the prime minister, to testify, and submit a report before June 1st. This while the committee already has at least three major government bills still on its agenda that are supposed to take precedence over other committee business, which includes investigations (to say nothing of the five private members' bills also on its docket). The clock is running out in terms of sitting days left in the life of this parliament, and there is a live question as to whether there is time enough for the Senate to do its work in getting bills passed before Parliament needs to rise for the election.
Smith claims that the committee would be able to conduct a better investigation as it's coming from an "independent body," as Independent senators make up the majority of it. But this is also part of the trap by Smith and the Conservatives they very much want to use this motion as a kind of "test" for the Independent senators to see if they are really independent, or if they are beholden to Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in the House of Commons and will therefore let this opportunity go, and I'm sure you can fill in the blanks about cries of "cover-up" or whatever.
To wit, Smith said this in the Chamber while defending his motion:
This motion provides both an opportunity and a challenge, especially to the ISG senators in this place, to walk the walk of the independence that they talk so much and so proudly about. If this motion is defeated, it will be defeated by the votes of our ISG senators, who will be seen as not prepared to display the independence they claim they have from the political executive and, in this case, especially the Prime Minister himself. This is the moment of truth for my friends and colleagues across the aisle. How they proceed will be one for the history books.
This, naturally, didn't sit well with the "facilitator" of the Independent Senators Group, Senator Yuen Pau Woo, who is already quick to accuse the Conservatives of partisanship at pretty much every opportunity. His response was also pretty telling of just how convinced he was by Smith's defence:
By implication, you have said that your own group is partisan and will take a partisan position on any inquiry and any study that is undertaken. Is it not appropriate, then, for independent senators to make a calculation on whether we support an inquiry based on the fact that there will be a large number of senators taking a partisan approach to this inquiry and, therefore, tarnishing the work of this committee and making this study unhelpful?
Woo was also on Power Play on Thursday, to say that while there are legitimate questions raised by the whole Affair, his position is that senators need to be careful that any investigation they undertake wouldn't be used simply for partisan purposes.
There was another interesting exchange between Smith and another Senator, Liberal-turned-Independent Senator Pierrette Ringuette, who hit back at some of Smith's assertions.
Just a few years ago, this institution was in a "scandal." Can you tell me which committee of the House of Commons investigated the Senate scandal? […] The short answer to my question is "zero." The House of Commons did not investigate anything in regard to the Senate.
Ringuette made the additional point that in the previous scandal in the Senate, the Commons didn't intervene in the Senate's affairs and respected their own process, just as senator should respect the processes put it place this time.
This having all been said, I have my doubts as to the utility of a Senate investigation into the matter, because even if it's a less partisan affair than the Commons committee, it would still be partisan because the Conservatives would make it such. We already have the broad strokes of the issue that Wilson-Raybould considered the attempts to get her to take a second look at the SNC-Lavalin file constituted inappropriate pressure, while Gerald Butts and Michael Wernick felt that they were engaged in lawful advocacy. The Conservatives will claim that there are all kinds of staffers that haven't been heard from, but our system is one that depends on ministerial responsibility that it's ministers who are to account for the behaviour of staffers, and they are the ones to be called to committees, not staffers. They claim that Wilson-Raybould hasn't been able to "speak her full truth," while the prime minister and countless legal minds have stated that she was free to speak everything under the waiver of privilege along with the fact that Wernick stated that there was no legal advice (hence solicitor-client privilege would not apply), and that it was not discussed in Cabinet (hence it's not covered by Cabinet confidence).
I fail to see what the Senate committee could achieve that hasn't already been done. Smith said that they would have the effect of "pressuring" MPs to be more vigorous in this matter, but let's also remember that there is no smoking gun. There is no black-and-white line absolute wrongdoing merely a grey zone in which there is a debate about what constitutes "inappropriate pressure." The Senate, meanwhile, is in the middle of a crisis of managing its workload which is not getting any better, and derailing its agenda further with this motion and investigation would have consequences. Good on the Conservatives for trying to cover their bases on this, but we're at the point now of determining credibility, and it will be up for the public to decide. No Senate investigation will change that.
Photo Credit: Macleans
