But to Opposition New Democrats, the committee’s study of the CBC is “a farce ... a witch hunt” intent on a partisan pursuit of the Tories’ perceived enemies.
Either way, any illusions that the spirit of non-partisanship would prevail under a Conservative majority government are quickly dashed whenever the House of Commons Access to Information and Ethics committee sits.
“ETHI,” as it is known in Parliament Hill shorthand, has quickly become the most entertaining — if not the least productive — show in Parliament, with often rancorous sniping between ranking Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro and senior NDP MP Charlie Angus.
This week, the committee continues its study of the CBC’s handling of access to information requests at a time when the corporation’s annual parliamentary appropriation of $1.1 billion is in the crosshairs of across-the-board government cuts.
Canadian conservatives have long alleged that CBC management and journalists hold Liberal or liberal sympathies. In fundraising campaigns, the Tories have evoked this alleged CBC bias to shake more money out of supporters. They would, no doubt, delight in the ethics committee shining more light on the corporation.
Thus, after the summer recess, the Conservatives used their majority on the ETHI committee to bump CBC to the top of the agenda, putting off a scheduled review of rules governing lobbyists and further study of alleged political interference in open-records requests — the “unreleasing” of documents at Public Works and Government Services Canada, for instance.
One might observe that the committee’s interest in the CBC is strikingly congruent with an ongoing print and broadcast campaign against the public broadcaster led by Sun Media and its parent company, Quebecor.
CBC’s French division, Radio-Canada, is the main competitor for Quebecor’s TV stations in Quebec, so its corporate interests in a defunded CBC overlap with those of conservatives who consider it a coven of leftists.
The new Sun TV network has provided obsessive and almost entirely negative coverage of what it calls “the state broadcaster,” an image evocative of North Korean TV or the Soviet-era TASS news service. Failings of the CBC and its journalists, real and imagined, are dredged up daily on the network.
No coincidence that the list of witnesses Del Mastro proposed included Quebecor president Pierre Karl Peladeau, as well as the Sun’s in-house pollster and two on-air Sun TV commentators who fulminate against the network nearly every night.
Of these, only Peladeau has agreed to appear. He is expected to testify on Thursday.
Del Mastro had also intended to call executives from Bell, Shaw and Rogers, but none, apparently, will attend.
At issue in Del Mastro’s study are the hundreds of access to information requests filed with the CBC, a great majority of them authored by the Sun papers.
CBC had denied many of these requests by citing an exemption that keeps secret records that concern its journalistic or creative endeavours. The rejected requests prompted numerous complaints to information commissioner Suzanne Legault.
While investigating those complaints, Legault was forced to go to court to challenge CBC’s refusal to let her examine the documents to see if they can be publicly released. She won in the Federal Court, but the CBC is appealing.
Del Mastro said he wants the committee to find out why the CBC is using its money — “tax dollars,” he calls it — to finance a court battle against another taxpayer-funded organ, the Office of the Information Commissioner.
But Del Mastro drew condemnation when he called Justice Richard Boivin to testify before the committee to explain his ruling against the CBC.
The move departed from the legal precedents that say judges don’t have to answer to politicians. The Canadian Judicial Council, the Canadian Bar Association and Boivin himself condemned Del Mastro’s invitation as interference in judicial independence. Del Mastro later withdrew Boivin’s name from his witness list.
To Angus, the attempt to call Boivin was a blow to the committee’s credibility and marks its descent into a kangaroo court.
“I think it’s turned into a farce right from the get-go,” said Angus.
“The very first orders of business have been two self-styled witch hunts by Dean Del Mastro.”
As Del Mastro also serves as parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Angus says he thinks the game plan for ETHI is handed down from higher up.
“I think he’s been given his marching orders to turn this committee into a circus.”
Angus said he has no problem with examining CBC’s record on access to information. But he’d also like to look at other Crown corporations, such as Canada Post, that Legault also says do poorly.
Del Mastro did not respond to a requests to comment on the committee’s work.
Once the CBC issue is disposed of, the committee will turn to the union sponsorship of the NDP convention in June.
The Tories allege that labour unions paid inflated costs for convention ads to skate around rules prohibiting them from donating to the party directly. Elections Canada has said it is looking into the matter.
Committee chair Nathan Cullen had ruled that the subject was out-of-bounds for the committee and should best be left to the committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The Conservatives used their majority to overrule Cullen’s decision and put the issue on the agenda. (Cullen has since resigned his position while he runs for the leadership of his party)
Angus accuses Del Mastro of using parliamentary privilege to advance unfounded allegations about him and the NDP.
“The immunity of the committee allows him to make all kind of crackpot statements.”
Turnabout, of course, is fair play. Before the Harper Conservatives won their majority, the same committee was used to probe the Tories’ in-and-out financing of advertising in the 2006 federal election.
Origin
Source: Ottawa Citizen
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