House of Commons | The government cannot present its own files

(Ottawa) The government was unable to present its own files in the House of Commons for an entire week, and the Conservatives said Thursday it was the result of Liberal “corruption.”

Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer said the governing party would rather see the House bogged down in debate than produce documents related to public money misspent in a program his party has dubbed “the green slush fund”.

House Speaker Greg Fergus ruled last Thursday that the government “clearly did not fully comply” with a House order to provide documents related to a now-defunct foundation responsible for the distribution hundreds of millions of federal dollars for green technology projects.

Rather than ordering the government to immediately produce the documents, Mr. Fergus ruled that the matter should be referred to a committee for study, and Mr. Scheer introduced a motion requesting just that.

The House has been debating the motion since then and Andrew Scheer warned it would stay that way until the government agreed to hand over the documents to police.

“They are ready for Parliament to be paralyzed rather than hand over this information to the RCMP for a possible criminal investigation,” Mr. Scheer protested in an interview Thursday.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) told MPs this summer that it would likely not be able to use the documents in an investigation, but Mr. Scheer argued that they should have access to all the information before to make a decision.

The Liberals say ordering the production of documents to be given to the RCMP blurs the lines between Parliament and the judiciary, and they blame the Conservatives for the House’s dysfunction.

Liberal House Leader Karina Gould called the request for documents an abuse of Parliament’s power, trampling on Canadians’ Charter rights.

“Let’s be very clear, it’s the conservatives who are trying to sully Parliament,” argued M.^me Gould Thursday. Conservative MPs are here for their own political and personal agendas and they don’t care what they are doing to Canadians in the meantime, and that is something that should be extremely alarming to all of us. »

Andrew Scheer counter-argued, saying the Charter exists “to protect the people from government.” It is not there to protect the government from accountability owed to the people.”

A similar conflict over government documents occurred when the Conservatives were in power during a minority government dispute more than a decade ago. In 2009, the House ordered the government to release unredacted documents related to Canada’s role in the torture of Afghan detainees.

Weeks after opposition parties passed a motion demanding the documents be produced, then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament for several months, preventing the House committee from pursuing the matter.

In this case, the Liberal government abolished Sustainable Development Technology Canada after the Auditor General published a scathing report on the management of the organization last spring. Among the projects she examined, one in six that received funding was not eligible. The auditor’s report also revealed 90 cases where conflict of interest policies were violated.

A month later, the ethics commissioner concluded that the former president of the foundation had failed to recuse herself from decisions that benefited organizations with which she had ties.

A particularly stormy return to school

The House has been in an almost constant state of turmoil since MPs returned to Ottawa in mid-September.

The Conservatives twice attempted to overthrow the minority government through motions of no confidence. Although both attempts failed to gain support from other opposition parties, the Conservatives promise there will be more such votes to come.

Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet denounced a “lack of respect for democracy” in the House during an unrelated press conference Thursday in Chicoutimi, Quebec.

Mr. Blanchet said that Bloc MPs are among the few in Parliament to ask thoughtful questions instead of “spewing slogans and banging on the desk,” like the other parties in the House.

“They are proud to have repeated the same thing that they have repeated 60 times in the last 60 days,” he said in French. Refusing to answer questions, when there are real ones, is not more respectful of voters. »

Among the rare votes that took place this week, there was a motion from the Bloc Québécois to push the government to support its bill on pensions for people aged under 75, a change that would cost more than 3 billion per year.

Although conservatives have criticized what they call politically motivated inflationary spending, they have thrown their support behind the bill.

Conservative Andrew Scheer did not respond to a question about why the party supported the motion.

Conservative seniors critic Anna Roberts said in a statement that the government’s inflationary spending has “raised the cost of groceries and gas and put a strain on Canadian families and seniors at home.” fixed income. »

Carney advising Trudeau would violate ethics

The Conservatives also asked Canada’s lobbying commissioner to investigate whether the fact that the Prime Minister made Mark Carney his personal advisor contravenes ethics rules.

The Liberals announced at their recent caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C., that Mr. Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada, had been named chair of a task force on economic growth and advisor from the Liberal leader.

They said Mr. Carney will help shape the party’s policies for the upcoming election and report to Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Platform Committee.

Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett said in a letter to the lobbying commissioner that the former Bank of Canada governor is not registered to lobby at the federal level, but his duties within companies place him in several potential conflict of interest situations.

“How could any ministerial staff member, MP or cabinet minister not feel indebted to Mr Carney because of his close affiliation with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance? asked Mr. Barrett in his letter on Thursday.

Mark Carney is the president of Brookfield Asset Management, which is in talks with the government to launch a $50 billion investment fund, with the support of Ottawa and Canadian pension plans.

Asked about Mr. Carney’s potential conflict of interest in the House, the finance minister repeatedly accused the Conservatives of smear and said the Liberals are fortunate to benefit from the advice of world-renowned experts.