A farce not seen since sponsorship scandal

Former prime minister Jean Chrétien is said to have told his cabinet the story of a farmer covered in cow dung. the farmer knew that if he tried to wipe the manure away when it was still fresh, he would spread it around and make it worse. Instead, he waited until it dried and then brushed it away.

the anecdote came to mind watching the liberal members of the justice committee buy the prime minister precious time to allow the hurricane of feculence soiling his reputation to pass before trying to clean it up.

liberal committee members claimed they wanted nothing more than to reassure Canadians that their justice system is not only intact, but robust, in light of allegations that the Prime minister’s office intervened inappropriately with the office of the then attorney-general, Jody Wilson-raybould, over the corruption prosecution of Quebec engineering giant, SNC-lavalin.

yet that enthusiasm did not prevent all five liberals from voting against an amendment that called for the key players in the saga to appear before them as witnesses.

It was a shameless display of sucking and blowing.

the liberals — randy boissonnault, ali Ehsassi, Colin Fraser, Iqra Khalid and ron Mckinnon — backed their own motion that called on the committee to consider the arcane points of law involved in the case — the concept of remediation deals for errant corporations and the principles of the shawcross doctrine that guides the relationship between the attorney general and his or her cabinet colleagues.

Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative provocateur-in-chief, said what the liberals appeared to want was a “legal symposium.”

the liberal motion also called for the appearance of three witnesses — the current attorney general david lametti; the clerk of the Privy Council michael Wernick; and the senior bureaucrat in the Justice department, nathalie drouin.

NDP MP nathan Cullen was first to point out that it was “more than interesting” that Wilson-raybould was not among the witnesses the liberals suggested calling.

“We can’t reassure Canadians because we don’t know what happened yet,” he said. “I don’t want a seven-month expedition into the deepest bowels of Canadian law.”

he proposed an amendment that added the names of Wilson-raybould and two high-ranking advisers in the Prime minister’s office, Gerald butts and mathieu bouchard, to the list of witnesses.

however, the liberal members combined to defeat it, on the grounds that the justice committee has always discussed its witness list in camera. the committee is “not an investigative body,” said boissonnault. “We don’t have the tools, the budget or the mechanisms to go on the type of fishing expedition or witch-hunt the Conservatives would like to see.”

It was as cynical a subversion of the public interest to narrow partisan concerns as Parliament hill has seen since the public accounts committee descended into farce during the sponsorship scandal a decade and a half ago.

as Cullen pointed out: “of course committees have the power to investigate — we can subpoena witnesses. It’s just a question of whether we want to use it.”

liberal MP Ehsassi was at least honest when he laid out his position — that in his personal opinion, “there is nothing to be concerned about.”

he said the liberal members had “checked our partisan hats at the door” and the real problem was the “political dynamic on the other side.”

the committee allowed for a certain amount of grandstanding from the opposition members.

Poilievre called Justin trudeau “despicable and cowardly” for attacking Wilson-raybould, “who is legally incapable of defending herself.”

the opposition deputy leader, lisa raitt, said the trudeau liberals constitute “a government in total chaos.”

but at least she got to the nub of the issue — that someone in the Prime minister’s office is alleged to have applied pressure on the attorney general to overrule the director of public prosecutions, Kathleen roussel, in the SNC- Lavalin case.

raitt said the committee’s job was to find out what form the pressure took and who applied it.

the Conservatives had put forward a motion that called on the committee to invite nine witnesses — Wilson-raybould; butts; bouchard; lametti; roussel; Wernick; Wilson-raybould’s former chief of staff, Jessica Prince; trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie telford; and his senior adviser, Elder marques — and report back no later than Feb. 28.

needless to say, that didn’t fly with liberal committee members who were remarkably incurious about what these additional witnesses might contribute.

liberal MP Mckinnon said that, since there is no hard evidence of any wrongdoing, it would be a mistake to invite “random people” as witnesses as part of a fishing expedition.

It’s as well leonardo di Vinci was not a liberal committee member or the renaissance might never have happened.

Conservative MP michael Cooper said Canadians deserve to be reassured that the Prime minister’s office did not try to intervene in a criminal prosecution, but that the liberal motion did little to offer that reassurance. “the only conclusion I can draw is that there is no interest in getting to the bottom of this matter,” he said.

Khalid said that she and her colleagues were independent and had not been influenced in any way to back the motion. “I stand by the integrity of this committee,” she said.

there remained the prospect of additional witness — lametti, Wernick and drouin were named only because they had already agreed to appear, she said.

that sparked the Conservatives to ask who had invited them, to which boissonnault conceded: “my colleagues in government …”

It emerged the government house leader’s office had co-ordinated the invitations.

so much for independence; so much for integrity.

the liberal attempt to drag out the proceedings was as blatant as it was unconvincing.

there was a particular irony in their enthusiasm to study the workings of remediation deals now that the provision has already passed into law. It was noted that the justice committee did not have the chance to examine the legislation when it was snuck into the budget implementation bill last year and rammed through the finance committee.

I have argued in recent columns that the interactions between the Prime minister’s office and the attorney general, on the available evidence, likely fell short of interference.

after the abject performance of the liberals on the justice committee, I’m not so sure. trudeau is sunk in the mire and it’s getting messy.