Maverick fails to force a showdown

Liberal MP votes against his party in ethics probe

In the end, one maverick Liberal MP wasn’t enough.

Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion was poised on Wednesday, ready to appear via videoconference before the House of Commons ethics committee, but his services were never required.

Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-smith voted against his party’s line, joining three opposition members in favour of letting the ethics commissioner testify about his damning report into the Snc-lavalin affair.

At first, the opposition members couldn’t quite believe they had lured a Liberal to their side. Could a hearing that was expected to be mere spectacle turn into a showdown? After Erskine- Smith finished a lawyerly speech about his position, NDP MP Charlie Angus interrupted the committee to make sure he had heard him correctly.

“Are you voting for the motion or against it?” Angus asked.

Erskine-smith confirmed that he was voting for the motion and Angus saluted him. “I don’t like his shoes, but everything else I have respect for,” Angus said.

Angus quickly did the math, though, noting that there were six Liberal MPS and three opposition MPS, so they could afford to let one go rogue because he’s a “nice guy.”

Angus was right; the remaining five Liberal MPS shut down the motion.

Although the MPS were generally collegial with each other, the upcoming election campaign suffused the debate.

Liberal MP Steven Mackinnon said the whole thing was just “partisan games,” and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who gave an impassioned speech about how the ethics report had shaken her to the core, said she wasn’t sure that it could be analyzed dispassionately so close to the election.

“Everyone goes into hyper- partisan mode before an election,” May said. “And this is, in a way, red meat before the election.”

The ethics report was a matter for resigning, although she added that she was not calling for Justin Trudeau to resign.

Although the writ has yet to drop for the Oct. 21 election, the campaigning has begun and, from the pre-campaign trail, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer was making personal pleas to Liberal MPS on the ethics committee to buck the party line.

Earlier on Wednesday, Scheer said he bumped into Erskine- Smith in his Toronto riding and urged him to “do the right thing for Canada.”

Before voting in favour of the Conservative motion, Erskine-smith made a point of noting that he wasn’t voting that way because Scheer told him to, or because of an email campaign to his office, which he said totalled about 10 emails.

The Liberal MP said he voted for the motion out of a desire for transparency around the ethics report and because he wanted a chance to interrogate the ethics commissioner.

Erskine- Smith said he agreed that the “PMO exerted pressure that should not have been exerted” in the SNC- Lavalin affair but said he also had major questions and concerns about the conclusions reached by Dion.

“I want him to sit right there” and answer them, he said, pointing at the empty witness seats around the committee table.

Erskine- Smith said he didn’t agree with Dion that Trudeau had committed a conflict of interest in pressuring the attorney general to intervene in the prosecution of Snc-lavalin.

It was left to Mackinnon to defend the government’s side and, for his efforts, he was interrupted by three points of order from the opposition side and numerous snorts of laughter and derision.

“This issue was studied thoroughly,” said Mackinnon, referring to justice committee hearings which heard testimony from former attorney general Jody Wilson- Raybould and Gerald Butts, the former principal secretary to Trudeau.

Dion’s report said Trudeau contravened conflict of interest rules when multiple people in his office tried to coax Wilson- Raybould into offering a deferred prosecution agreement to SNCLavalin.

When Mackinnon insisted the government was simply trying to protect jobs, he was interrupted by Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre who asked whether he had any analysis that showed jobs were actually at risk.

“Uhh, no,” said Mackinnon, causing a general uproar around the committee table.

The rest of the Liberal MPS kept quiet for the full two- hours of debate, then voted down the opposition motions.

Their silence allowed the stage to be commanded by the Conservatives and the New Democrats who set upon the government with relish.

Common themes from the opposition included that Trudeau broke the law, that the prime minister snubbed the ethics commissioner and that there had been obstruction of justice.

But Bill Morneau also came in for criticism from Charlie Angus who noted that the finance minister appeared to have had several memory lapses when talking to the ethics commissioner. Morneau was “the man with the amazing disappearing memory,” he said.

Talking to reporters after the hearing, Conservative MP Peter Kent said Mackinnon was a Liberal “hitman,” sent to quash any embarrassing testimony from the ethics commissioner and keep the other members quiet.

Mackinnon said he had no direction from the Prime Minister’s Office and that the individual members had chatted before the hearing about how they would each vote.

The Liberal leadership, though, surely has its eye on recent polling that showed Canadians are either unaware or unconcerned about the recent ethics report, which dropped in the middle of August.

Abacus Data found that only 16 per cent of Canadians “consumed a lot of news” on the topic compared to more than a third of Canadians who had not heard of the ethics report at all.

Nearly 80 per cent of Canadians polled said the report didn’t change their opinion about what happened in the SNC- Lavalin affair, while a mere six per cent said the report had changed their mind and they now believe the prime minister did something inappropriate.

“So all in all, not much impact,” said Abacus Data CEO David Coletto, on Twitter on Wednesday.

A Leger poll released on Wednesday showed the Conservatives and Liberals remaining in a dead heat, at 33 per cent each.

Conservative MP Lisa Raitt told reporters that Canadians can’t make a decision in October until they hear the whole story on the Snc-lavalin affair.

“The prime minster has never been really clear on what aspects of the ethics commissioners report that he actually is in disagreement with,” said Raitt.

Everyone goes into hyperpartisan mode before an election.