In the past few weeks, we have seen opposition MPs abuse the committee system to partisan ends. In a hung parliament, like we are currently in, the fact that opposition MPs have more seats on committees means that it's not uncommon for them to push their luck, but there has definitely been a different tone to what has been taking place in the current milieu, and instead of accountability, we are instead seeing the largest parliamentary fishing expedition in recent history, and a number of partisan witch hunts some which are having repercussion far beyond the committee room.
One of those witch hunts involves tangential players in the WE Imbroglio, being the demands placed on Speakers' Spotlight for documents related to speaking fees for members of the Trudeau family. The demands, which are outside of the bounds of the ethics committee's mandate, go far beyond the timeline of the proposed Canada Student Grant, or even of Justin Trudeau's appointment as prime minister, but rather they were demanding the particulars going back years longer than the company was obliged to keep records for. This is all well and good, but when the prorogation happened, the Conservatives and NDP went into overdrive, and demanded that the company continue to turn over documents, even though the committee ceased to exist during the prorogation period.
There are a couple of problems with this demand in that it was improper there was no committee in existence that could compel their disclosure; and more to the point, it would have been illegal for the company to do so, because it contained private information. Nevertheless, the Conservatives, NDP, and on occasion the Bloc, and all settled upon a (false) narrative that the pandemic had provided an excuse for the Liberals to "help their friends," and more to the point, that they were willing to prorogue to stop these committee hearings, so therefore something must have been so damaging in them that the prorogation was a cover-up.
Servicing this narrative was part of what fuelled the witch-hunt in the first place, but also led to the Conservatives' deputy leader, Candice Bergen, posting Speakers' Spotlight's contact information on her Facebook page in order to have her followers call the company to "convince them" to turn over the documents (privacy laws be damned). What happened should have been utterly predictable in that Bergen's followers began harassing the company's owners, to the point of uttering threats to them. After all, they are surely "Liberal friends" who are part of the "cover-up," and even after the existence of these threats were made public for which the Conservatives have not apologized there were still Conservative partisans over Twitter saying that the company wouldn't have received threats if they had simply turned over the documents (illegally). In other words, they deserved what they got.
Another peculiar witch-hunt playing out concerned Baylis Medical and a federal contract for ventilators and this especially plays into the "Liberals helping their friends" narrative because the company's owner, Frank Baylis, was a one-term Liberal MP (who chose not to run a second time in order to get back to his business). The problem is that none of the facts in the case fit this particular narrative, and Baylis' involvement was entirely coincidental not that any opposition party has bothered to cite a single fact in the case.
The genesis of this non-story was that auto parts manufacturer Rick Jamieson a Conservative donor it should be noted decided to get involved with supplying ventilators for the government back in the spring, when everyone was concerned that we would face a situation like Italy or the United States where we would run out and their use would be rationed in the face of mass deaths. He licensed designs, but needed a clean room to assemble them, and lo, Baylis Medical had one available, and a deal was struck. Jamieson had no idea Baylis was a former MP, and Baylis was not a public office holder under the Conflict of Interest Act, so he wasn't subject to any particular post-politics limitations that the Ethics Commissioner would have to police.
Nevertheless, for months, this narrative has been that the government used this contract to funnel proceeds to Baylis for being a good Liberal which is absurd in the face of the facts in the case, and when they hauled Baylis to the ethics committee and it should be noted that Baylis is a former member of said committee they subjected him to absurd questions and demands, including imaginary ethical obligations because of the need to jam the situation into their established narrative. This isn't how these committees are supposed to work, but political expediency apparently means breaking parliamentary norms for the sake of scoring quick and cheap points.
What is especially evident in incidents like these but also with the transformation of the health committee into a giant fishing expedition (for which they will never get all of the demanded documents vetted or translated in time for them to be useful) is the willingness to weaponize the tools that parliament is supposed to offer for parties to hold the government to account with little regard for precedent, or how it is exhausting those resources for those who need them for their intended function. And because it's a hung parliament, other opposition parties are gleefully going along with the Conservatives because they feel the potential to embarrass the Liberals and Justin Trudeau in particular is too great a temptation to bother with norms or setting bad precedents.
Unfortunately, this is all now part of the coarsening of our politics as party brass in certain corners have decided that the tactics we've seen south of the border are fair game to import here, whether it's witch hunts, bald-faced lying, or signing onto a culture war that has seen the norms of decency in politics being largely abandoned. It's especially too bad that they are willing to see innocent bystanders harassed and intimidated in service of their narratives, but when all that matters are points being scored, this is the inevitable result.
Photo Credit: True North
