All parties behave same way once in power

It should be the personal hell of every elected governing politician to have to serve on useless legislative and parliamentary committees as an opposition member.

No, they should suffer even more than that.

They should have to re-live serving on these committee as opposition members every day, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Then, and only then, would governing politicians come to terms with their wayward ways of running interference at the behest of their political masters to avoid needed public scrutiny of sometimes-sleazy government decisions.

This evil-yet-incredibly-satisfying thought crosses one’s mind in the wake of federal Liberal government members on the House of Commons justice committee blocking critical witnesses in the SNC-Lavalin fiasco from testifying.

Oh, they allowing witnesses. But none of them is former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, or Prime Minister Justice Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, or principal secretary Gerald Butts — people who might actually shed some light on allegations that political pressure was applied on Wilson-Raybould to drop criminal prosecution of the giant engineering firm.

Liberals MPs who used to bellyache about similar Conservative government tactics in committees and elsewhere now seem to believe that parliamentary committees just aren’t in the business of scrutiny.

“The role of the justice committee is not an investigative body,” said Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault. “At best, committees of the House of Commons are political theatre that can occasionally achieve good studies.”

Really? A body of lawmakers tasked with overseeing laws is nothing more than theatre and theoretical study? Was this the Liberal party view when your members sat on the opposition side of committee tables?

One thing the federal justice committee could have studied is the Criminal Code provisions permitting remediation agreements (plea bargaining) now afforded to large companies wanting to avoid criminal corporate corruption sentences. But as Conservative MP and former cabinet minister Pierre Poilievre pointed out, this justice committee couldn’t study this in advance of it becoming law because the Liberal government instead stuffed these Criminal Code changes into an omnibus bill at the lobbying behest of SNC-Lavalin.

That this country now looks to Poilievre as the beacon of non-partisan reason is disturbing. If this committee is Poilievre’s personal hell, perhaps it’s a deserved one, stemming from the days when he ran interference on behalf of the Stephen Harper Conservative government when it was using similar tactics to block auditors from testifying before a Senate committee investigating Mike Duffy’s expenses.

Or perhaps it’s a little present-day schadenfreude in advance of some future federal Conservative — one made a far more realistic possibility in light of the SNC-Lavalin/Wilson-Raybould scandal — doing the same things. While Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer purports to be wounded by unethical Liberals, he isn’t saying he will change committee work. He isn’t even saying he will criminally prosecute SCN-Lavalin or eliminate those deferred prosecution agreements the Liberals sneaked into the omnibus bill.

Unfortunately, it’s the mindset of every government that its majority somehow gives it the right to do what it wants and then impede and avoid public scrutiny of its decisions.

There is no better example of this hubris than what we saw from Saskatchewan Party government MLAs who repeatedly blocked witnesses from appearing before legislative committees examining the Global Transportation Hub (GTH) fiasco.

At last count, the Sask. Party committee backbenchers did this no fewer than 30 times. And there wasn’t even the pretence of subtlety.

Political staff from then premier-Brad Wall’s office would literally bring Sask. Party government committee notes and whisper in their ears just prior to votes. (Remember: governments are always afforded majority vote on such legislative committees, allowing them to pass obstructionist tactics.)

Alas, every government of every political stripe has done this. And no party ever wants to change it, once in power.

The system is broken in this regard. There is no fix. There is just the sincere hope that every governing politician who engages in this spends purgatory in opposition. Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post.