MPs behaving badly: Where were the red flags?
First it was Tony Clement and sexting. Now it’s Raj Grewal and gambling.
They are two, sad sagas of Canadian MPs gone rogue this fall — political careers in tatters thanks to some dangerous habits that escaped the notice of bosses and colleagues until it was too late.
Many, many questions still surround the political undoing of Clement and Grewal, but here’s one basic one that applies to them both: if being a member of Parliament is such a high office, why is the security bar set so low for that job?
Clement was on the newly formed national security committee of Parliament when he started to face extortion threats this summer for his sexual dalliances through social media. Grewal was on the Commons’ finance committee — well, up until September — while also wrestling with a serious gambling addiction.
Investigations are underway to see whether these MPs’ behaviour compromised the work they were doing on their respective committees.
But Canadians may well wonder why nothing came to light until the MPs themselves owned up to their transgressions — where were the red flags? Where was the screening?
Liberal caucus chair Mark Holland confirmed to the Star’s Alex Ballingall on Thursday that MPs don’t go through any additional screening measures when they get committee assignments. In fact, unless they’re promoted to jobs as cabinet ministers or parliamentary secretaries, Liberal MPs don’t face any security tests beyond the first one they must pass to run as a candidate for the party.
The Privy Council Office also confirmed on Thursday that ordinary backbenchers aren’t security screened — not unless they get promoted to higher ranks.
“Every cabinet minister and parliamentary secretary receives a security briefing,” spokesperson Stephane Shank said in reply to my query. “In each case, the briefing and training is provided by security officials of the departments to which ministers and their parliamentary secretaries are assigned.”
This isn’t the first time that the PCO has been asked about security measures surrounding ordinary backbenchers.
Seven years ago, in 2011, Conservative MP Bob Dechert put himself and his government in a potentially compromising position when he sent flirty emails to a reporter with China’s state-run news agency. PCO said back then that Dechert hadn’t been subject to any special security measures and Shank confirmed on Thursday that nothing has changed since 2011 with regard to backbenchers and security screening.
It’s possible that no one sees the need to put Canadian backbenchers through security hoops because their jobs, impressive as they may sound, don’t put them within reach of Canadian state secrets. An MP’s job, basically, is a lot of responsibility and very little authority. (The exception would be that national security committee that Clement was serving on, but we haven’t had much luck getting anyone to tell us whether appointees were subject to additional security vetting to serve on it. I’m suspecting not.) Most Commons and Senate committee proceedings are open to the public and, for the most part, governments don’t trust opposition MPs on those committees with sensitive information anyway.
Still, Phil Gurski, a former analyst with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and head of his own threat-and-risk consulting firm, says that he’s surprised by the lackadaisical approach to security surrounding backbench MPs.
He believes that the Grewal and Clement cases are going to turn into an argument to keep backbenchers in the dark. “Guys, if you’re not going to treat this properly, we’re not going to give it to you,” is what Gurski said he’d be telling backbenchers right now in the wake of the Grewal and Clement cases.
A golden rule of top-level security is to always protect “sources and methods,” says Gurski.
“I would be very, very surprised if any parliamentarian, short of the prime minister and maybe someone like (Public Safety Minister Ralph) Goodale would be briefed on sources and methods.”
What rogue backbenchers can do, however, is make the Canadian government look bad to allies, says Gurski, and that’s where these incidents can cause lasting damage. Canada’s allies, including the Americans, share lots of information with this country, and too many stories of elected MPs behaving badly could raise questions about whether Canada’s politicians can be trusted with sensitive information.
This is probably why you haven’t seen anyone in government wanting to answer too many questions about Clement and the extortion attempts against him — or why Grewal’s gambling problems raised alarms with the RCMP.
The career explosions of Clement and Grewal this fall are a fascinating look into the lives and temptations of ordinary MPs. A few more and we could have a reality-TV series on Netflix.
But they’re also a cautionary tale about how MPs can too easily fall into security-risk territory, the dangers of which are only revealed when they themselves come forward to admit them. Self-policing seems a little lax in these days of international political interference and democratic hacking. Canada may need to up its security game with backbenchers.