LIBERALS BLOCK ETHICS PROBE

Firm headed by prime minister’s childhood friend

OT TAWA • Opposition members on Monday pushed for a parliamentary investigation into recent expenditures by the Liberal Party, after it paid money in 2019 and 2020 to a firm headed by a childhood friend of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Liberal MPS pushed back against the review in an emergency meeting of the House of Commons ethics committee, accusing the opposition of engineering a “fake scandal” while failing to address similar spending practices by other major political parties.

Following hours of debate, the Liberals, with the help of the Bloc, voted down a motion by Conservative MP Michael Barrett that would have kicked off two committee hearings to investigate payments made by the Liberal Party to a Liberal-friendly Montreal-based firm.

The emergency meeting came after reports that the Liberal Research Bureau, a taxpayer-funded office, paid $75,000 in public funds to Data Sciences, a company owned by Tom Pitfield, a Liberal strategist who ran the last two digital election campaigns for the party. Pitfield is also a childhood friend of Trudeau’s and spouse of Anna Gainey, the former president of the Liberal Party of Canada. The payments were first reported by the Globe and Mail.

The payments were in addition to another $30,000 in taxpayer-funded spending by individual Liberal MPS to Data Sciences. Individual MPS also paid $75,000 across their ridings to NGP VAN, the U.S. maker of software used by the Liberal Party to operate their Liberalist database.

Liberal members on Monday said accusations of misspent public funds are largely unfounded, and ignore spending practices by other major parties including the Conservatives and NDP.

“It seems that my colleagues are really trying to engineer a fake scandal at all costs,” Liberal MP Brenda Shanahan said.

Political parties often use public funds for tech support or basic administrative tasks, Shanahan said, rather than for purely political purposes. Conservative members have also been known to use the same pool of funds for firms that are friendly to the party.

“When it comes to software, especially English language software, it’s very difficult to get technical support in French,” Shanahan said. “So that’s what this is about, Data Sciences is a Canadian firm with bilingual employees.”

The Liberals pushed instead to have the investigation conducted by a separate parliamentary body designed specifically to oversee internal government spending. The meeting was later adjourned without passing Barrett’s motion, supported by all Liberals on the committee as well as Bloc MP Mariehélène Gaudreau.

In a news release following the adjournment, Barrett said Liberal and Bloc members had “blocked an investigation into Liberal MPS using taxpayer dollars to subsidize their political operations.”

Liberal MP Patricia Lattanzio accused the Conservatives of using an emergency committee meeting for purely political gain, telling the group parliamentary committees are “neither investigative nor judicial bodies.”

“You cannot simply call this committee together and propose to study any political witch hunt on a whim because it happens to be politically self-serving,” Lattanzio said.

Liberal Steve Mackinnon took a personal attack on Barrett’s motion, suggesting it was part of a pattern by the Conservative MP to launch investigations into the Liberal government only to find “not much dug up there.”

“He’s dug a lot of dry holes, he’s kind of like the Death Valley well driller,” he said.

Barrett contested that assertion, pointing out that the last major investigation by the House ethics committee shed light on the Liberal decision to award a sole-sourced $900-million contract during the COVID-19 pandemic to WE Charity, whose founders are close to the Trudeau family.

In May, the Ethics Commissioner ruled that former Finance Minister Bill Morneau had broken conflict of interest laws in the awarding of the contract. The commissioner cleared Trudeau on the same charges.

Other opposition members also highlighted the WE Charity and other scandals, saying a pattern by the Liberal government of funnelling money to close allies of the party justifies a more thorough investigation.

“We’re having some déjà vu here,” NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice said. “Liberals helping friends of the Liberal Party, Liberals who don’t really hesitate to use public money to help their friends. We’ve seen this before.”

Boulerice put forward his own motion to limit the investigation to just one committee meeting, saying it might help avoid a “partisan circus” over the matter.

“It’s very clear that Mr. Pitfield is a partisan actor here,” Conservative MP Colin Carrie told the committee, arguing that he is an especially close friend of Trudeau’s

“Let’s just talk about this relationship here. He grew up with him. Their fathers were best friends,” he said.