National Post (National Edition)
Liberals relent on handing over WE documents
Finance, ethics committees stalled
OT TAWA • The Liberals have agreed to an opposition demand to remove some government redactions on documents related to the WE Charity scandal, potentially ending a Liberal filibuster that has stalled the finance committee for weeks.
The standoff between the government and the opposition parties has prevented the House of Commons finance committee from doing its usual work, such as conducting a pre-budget study where it hears from groups across Canada who have requests for the federal budget.
A similar Liberal filibuster over the issue of disclosing the Trudeau family’s speaking fees has paralyzed the ethics committee, though the Liberals also finally allowed that matter to come to a vote on Monday, which the opposition won.
The moves by the Liberals this week are a sign the government may be ready to get parliamentary committees functioning again — but it will still depend on whether the Conservatives, Bloc Québécois and NDP are satisfied. Due to the minority government, the Liberals need an opposition MP to side with them to win a vote.
The WE affair was kicked off last June, when the government announced a highly controversial and now-defunct deal to have WE Charity administer a student volunteer grant program. Neither Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nor then-finance minister Bill Morneau recused themselves from the decision, despite family financial ties to WE that later came to light.
In the finance committee, the standoff dates back to August when a trove of government documents related to the WE controversy was disclosed, but had large sections redacted by public servants even though the committee motion had directed the redactions be done by the independent House of Commons law clerk.
Trudeau then prorogued Parliament for a month, which dissolved the committees.
Ever since Parliament returned this fall, the opposition parties have been determined to get the law clerk access to the unredacted documents. The Liberals filibustered that demand by giving interminable speeches in committee, and instead proposed that public servants come testify at committee about the redactions.
Monday morning, Government House Leader Pablo Rodriguez relented, announcing the Liberals would finally agree to hand over the documents minus a few redactions that he hoped the opposition would agree to.
“Finance committee must move forward,” Rodriguez said on Twitter. “We have now agreed to send unredacted documents to the Law Clerk, except those that were redacted to protect cabinet confidences and unrelated material as already allowed by the committee motion.”
Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative finance critic, said his party had already agreed to the cabinet committee redactions, which covered about 46 per cent of the redactions. But he objected to allowing the “unrelated material” redactions to remain.
“We just want the parliamentary law clerk to look at (the documents) and confirm whether or not they are irrelevant to our study,” Poilievre said, saying this should be no problem if the Liberals have nothing to hide.
Poilievre said the Liberals have given almost 30 hours of speeches during their fiveweek filibuster of the finance committee, and noted it’s been a “record 18 months” since there was a federal budget to prepare for.
The finance committee is scheduled to meet Tuesday afternoon, at which point it should become clear whether the Liberals and opposition parties can move forward.
In the meantime, the Liberals also dropped their filibuster of an ethics committee motion that would order the Speakers Spotlight bureau to disclose records of speaking fees for Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau since 2008. (An initial demand for records about Trudeau’s mother and brother has been dropped.)
The speaking fees issue has been a long-running drama in the ethics committee, in part because a Bloc MP accidentally voted with the Liberals on Oct. 26 to reject disclosing the speaking fees. The Liberals have protested that this new motion violates parliamentary rules over revisiting a vote, and Liberal MP Greg Fergus warned on Monday that the vote would be seen as illegitimate.
“It appears partisanship, pettiness, personal agendas and the Conservatives’ decade-long obsession with the Trudeau family now takes precedence over rule and procedure,” Fergus said. “If this motion ends up passing, as the opposition holds majority at the committee, its validity will be immediately questioned and it will raise serious questions about the ability of the motion to be enforced.”
Committee chair David Sweet, a Conservative MP, noted afterward that he had ruled the motion was in order and the committee had upheld his ruling by a majority vote.
Yet even after all that, it is not clear how quickly the committee will be able to conduct the study ordered by the opposition’s motion. Liberal MP Han Dong immediately moved a motion of his own that would have the committee do a study on election security, and the Liberals then proceeded into long speeches about it.
NDP MP Charlie Angus burst out in frustration that it had taken 40 hours of debate for the committee to finally pass the speaking fees motion. “I know Mr. Dong is attempting to derail the WE study,” Angus said, shortly before the committee adjourned for the day.
CONFIRM WHETHER OR NOT THEY ARE IRRELEVANT TO OUR STUDY.