OTTAWA—A battle over access to internal documents at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has come to a head with opposition MPs accusing the Conservative government abusing their parliamentary powers to interfere with the court.“This is not a partisan issue,” New Democrat MP Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay) said Thursday. “This is about the fundamental workings of Parliament.”
Conservative MPs on the Commons ethics committee passed a motion during a special closed-door meeting late Wednesday ordering the CBC/Radio-Canada to give them both the censored and uncensored versions of documents at the heart of a judicial dispute over access-to-information requests.
Heritage Minister James Moore gave the move a resounding endorsement.
“The truth is the CBC receives a lot of money. Our government has been clear: if it is going to receive that money then it needs to be accountable for it,” Moore said during question period in the Commons on Thursday.
New Democrat and Liberal MPs on the ethics committee boycotted the Wednesday meeting in protest.
The requests filed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and media outlets owned by Quebecor Inc. — whose QMI Agency and Sun News Network have been running an ongoing series of stories about the spending habits of what they call the “state broadcaster” — were for details about employee income, a fleet of vehicles, financing of any programs or films about the erstwhile Quebec Nordiques hockey team and the planning budget for the CBC/Radio-Canada 75th anniversary celebration.
A spokesman for CBC/Radio-Canada said the Crown corporation received a letter from the ethics committee clerk requesting the documents by Nov. 14.
“We are analyzing the motion and are looking for ways to satisfy the legitimate desire of the Committee to understand better our transparency and accountability, while protecting our journalistic independence,” Marco Dubé wrote in an email Thursday.
The CBC has exemptions under the federal Access to Information and Privacy Act that allows it to prevent the disclosure of records related to its journalistic, creative and programming activities — a power the federal information commissioner told the committee last month she believes is being applied too broadly, leading to what appears to be the arbitrary rejection of requests.
The CBC headed to the Federal Court of Appeals to argue that only a judge — rather than the information commissioner — should be able to see material the public broadcaster deems to fall under the exemption.
That is why opposition MPs are upset that Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro (Peterborough) went ahead with his motion ordering the CBC to allow committee members to secretly examine the uncensored documents.
They argue that it goes against what is called the sub judice convention — the tradition of Parliament reigning in its own powers a bit in order to avoid preventing someone from having a fair trial.
“Will the Minister of Justice explain our Constitution to (Del Mastro) and how it mandates a strict separation between the courts and Parliament, or is he part of this abuse of power as well?” Liberal MP Scott Andrews asked during question period on Thursday, which prompted the aforementioned response from Moore.
The NDP and the Liberals are awaiting independent legal counsel from parliamentary law clerk Rob Walsh before they participate in any more committee meetings.
Del Mastro argues the point of demanding the CBC produce the documents is to help Parliament review — and then perhaps redefine — the exemption without having to wait for the distant outcome of the Federal Court of Appeals case.
“Parliament wrote this exemption. Parliament may want to consider better defining it (before) this long and protracted battle that could go on for years and years with taxpayers footing the bill so that we could in fact see operations that are in fact consistent with the spirit of the Access to Information Act moving forward and we can just put all this behind us,” Del Mastro said in an interview Thursday.
The Conservative Party of Canada recently surveyed its grassroots on whether taxpayers receive a good value or bad value for the money going to the public broadcaster and Angus argued the committee tactics are part of a larger Conservative campaign against the CBC.
“They decided to create a sense of enmity with the CBC and they are using their power at committee to engage in the witch hunt,” said Angus.
Del Mastro disagreed.
“I think our government has been consistent with its support of the CBC,” Del Mastro said.
The CBC receives $1.6 billion from federal coffers this year and is facing a 5 to 10 per cent budget reduction as part of the government-wide spending cuts.
Del Mastro said CBC President Hubert Lacroix is scheduled to appear before the committee Nov. 17.
Quebecor spokesman Serge Sasseville had no comment Thursday.
Origin
Source: Toronto Star
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