Liberals stalling for time
You know, if you don't want to look like you're trying to hide something, you might try not hiding things.
That sounds like simple advice, but it's also advice the federal Liberals seem to be ignoring.
The Liberals have been saying for ages that nothing untoward took place in their handling of a massive contract with the WE Charity to provide support and administration for the $543-million Canada Student Service Grant program.
WE's involvement ended after conflict of interest concerns were raised about the fact that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's family members had financial ties with WE — and because the contract for the grant program was given to the charity without going through a competitive bidding process.
This week, the House of Commons ethics committee sought more information about whether there was political interference in the contract, a contract the Liberals have said was recommended by public servants.
The committee wanted to speak to three senior political staffers: Rick Theis, the prime minister's director of policy and cabinet affairs; Amitpal Singh, the deputy prime minister's policy adviser; and Ben Chin, the PM's senior adviser.
The Liberals refused to let the staffers go before the committee, and instead sent House Leader Pablo Rodriguez to answer the questions, even though he said he had very little involvement in the process.
Rodriguez tried to characterize the committee's work as an attack on staffers: “We fundamentally disagree with the decision of the Opposition to use its powers to intimidate and mistreat staff members who work in political offices,” he said. That is more than a bit rich. Say a house caught fire, and arson investigators got involved in trying to discover the cause. If there were three people standing in front of the house when the firefighters arrived, would it be mistreatment and intimidation to interview them about what they might have seen or done?
It's easy to look at this as some sort of political chess game, where the Liberals are simply trying to outflank opposition parties who, combined, have more seats than the Liberals and a bit of power as a result.
But don't the Liberals understand that every time they play a procedural game like this, everyone else out in the real world watching this charade is not saying, “Oh, what artful politicians these Liberals are”?
No, what normal people ask is much more fundamental. It's, “If the federal Liberals don't have anything to hide here, why does it always look like they're trying to hide something?”
The truth is that the Liberals have dragged their feet at every opportunity, blocked committees, slowed the process, and all of it in the hopes, it seems, that the issue might just go away if they make it difficult enough.
But it won't.
The message is that something's rotten.