Opposition blasts Liberals over prorogue

MP calls it `toxic disdain for democracy'

OTTAWA • Opposition members on Thursday accused the Liberal government of blatant partisan manoeuvring when it prorogued Parliament last summer, in what one MP said showed a “toxic disdain for democracy” by the prime minister.

Liberal, Conservative and NDP members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs debated whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was justified in his decision to shut down Parliament for five weeks last summer, just as his government was reeling from the WE scandal.

Opposition members at the time blasted the move as undemocratic, saying it kneecapped the critical work of several committees that were studying the prime minister’s role in the controversy.

The scandal emerged after Trudeau had reportedly failed to recuse himself from the Liberal government’s decision to award a $912-million contract to WE Charity to administer a student benefit program. Trudeau and some of his family members, including wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, had earlier been paid for several public speaking engagements on behalf of the charity, and maintained close relationships with its founders.

“Does that not speak to something that I think raises a level of toxic disdain for democracy that makes the Canadian people distrust why these decisions were being made?” NDP MP Charlie Angus asked during committee.

The Conservative government was also criticized for attempting to subvert Parliamentary scrutiny under former prime minster Stephen

Harper, who shut down Parliament on several occasions, including in 2008 as a way to avoid a confidence vote.

Angus described being “permanently in opposition” for 17 years, where he has watched successive governments prorogue Parliament for blatantly political reasons, only to accuse other parties of partisanship for doing the same.

“It’s an old political trick,” he said. “If you can punt a problem down the road, if you can punt it far enough, you feel you’ve won. And that’s what the Liberals think they’ve done. But, as it was with Stephen Harper’s government, the prime minister, Mr. Trudeau, has toxified his relationship with Canadians.”

Prorogation effectively terminates the Parliamentary session, clearing the legislative agenda. Trudeau could have waited to prorogue until a day before the throne speech, which was delivered Sept. 23. Instead, Parliament was suspended for the entire five weeks, ceasing legislative debate and halting all committee work.

Three parliamentary committees — the finance, ethics, and government operations committees — had ongoing investigations into the WE Charity scandal at the time. Trudeau announced the prorogation at a hastily-announced press conference just 24 hours after former finance minister Bill Morneau offered his resignation from his post.

Liberal MP Ryan Turnbull told the committee on Thursday that the decision to prorogue Parliament was purely to allow Ottawa to “identify priorities and to set the next stage of our agenda.” He asked the committee whether it seemed likely that the “deep economic social impacts” that COVID-19 had left on Canadian society seemed like a reasonable reason to suspend Parliament for five weeks.

“Wouldn’t that make sense?” Turnbull asked.

Conservative and NDP members were quick to dismiss the justification, saying the Trudeau government had claimed the prorogation would give it an opportunity to assemble a mega-plan to “build back better” after the pandemic. However, the throne speech mostly repeated previous Liberal talking points, and expanded funding for a few existing social programs.

Even after Parliament returned this fall, committee work on the WE scandal was continually delayed by the “ridiculous and disgraceful behaviour of Liberals,” Angus said.

Liberal members of the House of Commons finance committee filibustered for the equivalent of 40 meetings, according to Angus’s count, after the committee sought to have thousands of pages of documents related the controversy unredacted. The documents, provided to the committee during the summer, had been heavily redacted by civil servants.

“That is obstruction of the work of Parliament,” Angus said.

Ian Brodie, who served as Harper’s chief of staff from 2006 to 2008, told the committee in his opening remarks that prorogation is a “strictly political act done strictly for political reasons.”

But he said the committee should nonetheless question Trudeau over the specific circumstances of this prorogation, which shut down crucial committee hearings into the WE scandal and terminated debate on Bill C-7, Ottawa’s controversial assisted dying law.

“The prime minister’s decision to prorogue ended ongoing committee investigations of what appears to have been a major conflict of interest on the part of the prime minister himself, and possibly the finance minister,” Brodie said. “What steps is the prime minister prepared to take to dispel the cloud over this aspect of his decision?”

Kathy Brock, professor at Queen’s University, told the committee in an earlier testimony that the prorogations under Harper and Trudeau share a lot of resemblance.

“Both 2008 and 2020 share a striking similarity,” she said. “Both governments were facing economic crises. Both governments used the prorogation to develop new plans that they could present to the House. Both governments received the confidence of the House following the prorogation.”