When an MP is jailed, voters should know

The two months of silence that surrounded the arrest of Kitchener South-Hespeler MP Marwan Tabbara are not only deafening, they are completely unacceptable.

When one of Canada’s 338 members of Parliament is jailed, then charged with committing serious criminal offences — including violent ones — the public deserves to know. When these charges are deliberately kept secret the public needs to know why.

And this, in a nutshell, is what just happened with Tabbara. Way back on April 9, Guelph police arrested him, held him in custody overnight and charged him with two counts of assault, one count of “break and enter and commit an indictable offence” and one count of criminal harassment.

Had news of his legal travails broken in April as they should have, Tabbara would have made headlines across Canada. His constituents would have been informed. So would the federal Liberal government of which, until recently, he was a part. And life would have become distinctly hotter for him.

But because Tabbara and Guelph police deliberately remained tight-lipped about it all, almost nobody knew what had happened to the MP until early this month. Indeed, it was only after several media outlets began asking questions that the news of Tabbara’s charges belatedly entered the public domain on June 5.

Tabbara should have come forward with this information himself. It is his duty as a public representative. Shortly after his arrest he saw fit to use Facebook to thank local front-line workers for keeping the public healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet when it came to informing the public about the far more consequential news involving his own life, he steered clear of social media.

Like every other MP, Tabbara is entrusted by voters with the rare power to make laws, tax people and spend money on their behalf. In his case, he enjoyed the additional clout that came with chairing Parliament’s subcommittee on International Human Rights and sitting on the special committee on the COVID-19 pandemic.

He should have known that along with such awesome power comes exceptional responsibility. Members of the public — especially his own Kitchener South-Hespeler constituents — have a right to know when and if his ability to represent them has been diminished in any way.

In this case it was compromised big time. The fact that Tabbara resigned from the Liberal caucus to sit as an independent almost immediately after news of his arrest broke proves the grave political implications of the charges against him. They made it impossible for him to continue as part of the Liberal government, which he has embarrassed despite its weak assurances it knew nothing of the charges against him.

Only the unseemly secrecy surrounding those charges permitted Tabbara to continue his life as if nothing had happened.

The whole affair leaves some tarnish on the badges of the Guelph Police Service, too. Arguing they were merely following Ontario’s Police Services Act, Guelph police said they kept quiet about Tabbara’s arrest because they determined he posed no threat to public safety.

That defence rings hollow. If public safety was not an issue, the public interest was. The public clearly needs to know if one of their elected representatives spends a night in jail.

At a time when police reform is high on many government agendas, the ongoing ability of police to withhold such vital information from public eyes should be challenged.