The Hill Times - January 30, 2012
Also Published In:
The Calgary Herald
By Colin Kenny
Over the course of Canada’s history the word “liar” and the phrase “bag of wind” have been deemed to be unparliamentary by House of Commons speakers. So I will make every effort to avoid these descriptions in examining what has been said by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews on the subject of who gets to speak to whom on Parliament Hill.
This issue arose recently when RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson told me that his attempt to arrange a meeting between us – which I had requested – was being stymied by a government policy of which Commissioner Paulson had previously been unaware. This policy decreed that all meetings between himself and parliamentarians had to be approved by Mr. Toews. Moreover, meetings could not take place unless members of other parties attended.
These requirements were subsequently made clear to me in an e-mail by Mark Johnson, an aide to Mr. Toews. Our exchange can be found on my website (colinkenny.ca). When the full implications of the edict came clear to me, I told Commissioner Paulson that I thought he was being muzzled.
After I raised the issue in the media, Mr. Toews flatly denied that there were any restrictions on whom Commissioner Paulson could meet with: “The Commissioner of the RCMP will meet with whom he chooses to meet with.”
Further, said Mr. Toews, the Conservative policy on whom senior government officials could meet had not changed since the days of Liberal governments. To prove his point, he held up a policy advisory put out by his Liberal predecessor, Anne McLellan.
There are two contradictions here that would tempt any parliamentarian to use unparliamentary language in describing the minister’s performance.
The first is obvious: while Mr. Toews was saying that Commissioner Paulson could meet with whomever he chose to meet with, his aide was setting out in writing that no meeting could take place unless it was approved by Mr. Toews, and if representatives of two other parties were present.
Secondly, the McLellan advisory places no restrictions on who officials can talk to – it contains nothing like the restrictions laid out by Mr. Johnson. It refers only to appearances before parliamentary committees by her department’s public servants, advising them that they should (a) pre-clear their opening statements, and (b) keep her office advised if anything new or problematic comes out of testimony at a committee. That’s a long way from the current clamp down on reasonable discourse.
You may ask who I think I am to approach the Commissioner of the RCMP for a meeting. Well, I am a parliamentarian, for a start. Yes, there are about 400 of us, but fewer than a couple of dozen of us have shown much interest in security matters. So the RCMP commissioner is unlikely to be snowed under by requests for meetings.
I was chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, a committee that put out 27 reports that demanded better performances from both Liberal and Conservative governments. I have published 44 articles on security issues. Because they know my interests in improving security for Canadians is genuine, I have had no problem in meeting with Mr. Paulson’s nine predecessors and with a multitude of Canadian security officers and experts, all of whom are listed on my website (sorry Mr. Toews, there have been no secret meetings, as you allege).
The minister’s control mechanisms are unacceptable. The idea of getting representatives of three parties together to discuss issues that may be of no interest to two of them is unwieldly, unworkable, and a thinly-disguised method of having Conservative minders monitor conversations. The minister is well aware of that. Parliamentarians aren’t nursery school children, to be tied together and led down the street by teachers from the Harper cabinet.
Control has careened out of control under this government. Ministers are scripted; committees are neutered; debate is cut off; public servants are muzzled; laws and court edicts are ignored; official watchdogs are fired; bills are adulterated with agenda-filling provisions unconnected to the bills’ rationale; opposition amendments are dismissed out of hand; provincial premiers are avoided; and, in an era of restraint, the prime minister’s communications control team grows like Topsy.
Mr. Toews should be busy preparing legislation to set up a board to advise the Commissioner of the RCMP, as a long list of experts have recommended over the past decade. Instead he appears to trying to micromanage the police service himself, which isn’t his job. For good reason, the RCMP is supposed to operate at arm’s length from the government.
As for senior public servants generally, they work their way to the top because they are bright, and because the government trusts them. They should be permitted to meet with whomever they wish, as long as they keep their minister advised of anything of substance that might emerge from those meetings.
Unlike Mr. Toews, I have been publicly critical of both Conservative and Liberal foolishness. But for a minister to tell the public that he is not controlling anything, while his office is issuing edicts of control, goes beyond being foolish. It is plain and simple deceit.
[Colin Kenny is former chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca/www.colinkenny.ca]