I have been a little quiet here lately for a number of reasons. I won’t go into the reasons for that right now, but I wanted to take a few moments to comment on the Committee hearing that happened on May 6th in regards to the matter of the Government staffer, Sébastien Togneri, who blocked the release of information under the Access to Information Act after that information had already been sent out of his department.
I have watched this hearing all the way through, and I must say that the behaviour of the Government members in this hearing is simply disgusting, and truly needs to be seen by as many Canadians as possible. You can view the meeting here: http://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/Parlvu/ContentEntityDetailView.aspx?ContentEntityId=6128.
Otto von Bismark once said that in order to retain respect for sausages and laws, one should never watch them being made. I think this can quite reasonably be extended to most business of government. Most people, watching this kind of meeting, are likely to have their opinion of government adversely affected. The rules of order seem pedantic and boring, and seem intended to hinder progress, not aid it.
Anyone who has been involved in meetings run under a set of parliamentary rules knows that the rules are in place to prevent abuses, and to facilitate orderly meetings. However, anyone who has had to run a contentious meeting under rules of order also knows that those rules can be easily used to derail an otherwise effective meeting.
The Conservatives chose, in this meeting, to abuse the rules of order so that they could derail a committee hearing that is potentially embarrassing to the government. I’m not going to suggest that the Conservatives are the only party to ever abuse the rules of order in this way, but the fact that the government chose to do so in this matter is indicative of their contempt for the openness and transparency that they have based their election platforms on for the past ten years.
