OTTAWA – The Conservative government is again testing the patience of an already aggravated Parliament, this time by refusing to allow ministerial staff to testify at committees.
Since the beginning of the year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has poked his rivals in the eye over the prorogation of Parliament and the withholding of documents related to Afghan detainees.
Now that MPs have reached an agreement on seeing those documents, another showdown is shaping up over the right of Commons committees to call whatever witnesses they want to see.
The debate erupted as Harper’s director of communications, Dimitri Soudas, was scheduled to testify at a committee examining political interference in access to information requests.
Government House Leader Jay Hill told the Commons on Tuesday that political staff were being instructed to turn down requests to appear, and ministers would account for their actions.
“The tyranny of the opposition majority has turned its attention to the men and women who make up our political staff,” said Hill.
“Men and women who did not sign up to be tried by a committee — to be humiliated and intimidated by Members of Parliament.”
Already, the Commons ethics committee is calling the move an assault on its parliamentary privilege and wants witnesses formally summoned. Those who ignore such a summons could be found in contempt of Parliament.
The new policy is an abrupt change in tack for the government.
The committee had been scrutinizing the case of an aide to former Public Works Minister Christian Paradis, who had personally blocked the release of access documents to The Canadian Press.
At the time, Paradis placed the blame for the interference squarely on the shoulders of staffer Sebastien Togneri, even stripping him of his oversight of access requests.
“What my employee tells me here is that he really lacked judgment,” Paradis told The Canadian Press in February, adding that Togneri would submit to an investigation by the Information Commissioner.
At no time did Paradis say he was accountable or responsible for Togneri’s actions.
Paradis, now Natural Resources minister, has most recently refused to appear at the government operations committee to answer questions about alleged illegal lobbying by former Tory MP Rahim Jaffer.
In that case, Togneri had been pressing bureaucrats to meet Jaffer and his business partner to discuss a renewable energy project.
Paradis’ office did not immediately respond to a question about whether the minister would now appear at committees.
But Transport Minister John Baird did appear Tuesday, on behalf of Harper — Soudas’s boss. He also said he would appear at the government operations committee on behalf of one of his own staff.
“The days when you could call in 25-year-old young people into this committee, to beat up staff who can’t defend themselves, are over,” said Baird.
Liberal MP Wayne Easter reacted angrily to Baird’s remarks, saying Soudas was the one with the reputation for intimidating cabinet ministers.
“He’s no 25-year-old. He represents the prime minister’s office on TV every day,” said Easter.
“We see more of the PMO through Dimitri Soudas, than ministers who have ministerial responsibility in this government.”
The Conservatives have a strong case when it comes to arguing that they are responsible and accountable for their political staff, says one of the country’s leading experts on governance.
Donald Savoie says ministers are both accountable and responsible for the actions of their staff, unlike public servants who are responsible for their own areas of administration.
“In a constitutional sense the government has a point: ministerial staffers are in a kind of no-man’s-land,” said Savoie, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at the University of Moncton.
But Savoie says just because the Conservative government might be technically correct, that doesn’t mean the public has an appetite for their argument.
He points to the public’s recent reaction to MPs blocking the Auditor General from looking at their expenses. MPs might be right from a constitutional standpoint, but Canadians don’t really care.
“Government can make the case, but I don’t think Canadians are in the mood to hear that case, and I don’t think Parliament is in the mood to hear that case,” said Savoie, author of the new book, “Power: Where is it?”
“Politically, it’s going to be hard to sell.”
