The opposition parties kept the hearings going into the federal government’s controversial plans to spend $25-billion on 65 F-35 fighter fighters, but NDP MP David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre, Ont.) lashed out at Liberal MP Gerry Byrne (Humber-Baie Verte-Ste. Barbe, Nfld.) for publicly revealing last week to The Hill Times that there was a government motion proposing that the House Public Accounts Committee begin preparing a report to the Commons, after only seven hours of committee witness testimony and evidence.
At an earlier in-camera meeting on Thursday, May 17, when Conservative MP Andrew Saxton (Vancouver North, B.C.) moved a motion to end witness hearings and begin writing a report to the Commons on Tuesday, May 29, the NDP moved an amendment to Mr. Saxton's motion that would have called in more witnesses and delayed the report writing to Thursday, May 31, according to a copy of the motion made by NDP MP Mathieu Ravignat (Pontiac, Que.) shows.
Mr. Saxton's motion proposing to end the evidence portion of the hearings is still under consideration by the committee, although the deadline has expired because of opposition resistance in behind closed doors in the last two secret hearings.
Mr. Christopherson chairs the government oversight committee as a member of the official opposition. He accused Mr. Byrne of attacking him in the Commons when Mr. Bryne asked Mr. Christopherson in House Question Period last week about a ruling he had earlier made, along with the government closure motion, that it take precedence over hearing from two witness and evidence motions from Mr. Byrne the committee was already dealing with.
“Mr. Byrne has chosen that because he can’t get the rulings he wants, that he is going to hold whatever tantrums are necessary to convince the world that he’s right and the rest of the world is wrong,” Mr. Christopherson told reporters after the in-camera meeting.
“And on this matter, in my opinion, Mr. Byrne has been a dishonourable crybaby and because he doesn’t have enough talent to come up with procedures that will let him win, he starts to argue the rules are unfair,” Mr. Christopherson said.
“The rules are being applied fairly, unbiased. He challenged my decisions in committee and those decisions were affirmed by every other member of the committee, and it’s unfortunate that Mr. Byrne feels he’s acting in the best interest by the way that he’s acting, but he’s not,” said Mr. Christopherson.
“He’s bringing dishonour to himself and he’s avoiding and preventing the committee from being able to deal with this issue in whatever way they ultimately decide,” he said.
Mr. Christopherson appeared particularly angry over the questions Mr. Byrne asked him in the Commons Question Period about his earlier rulings.
“That was an attack,” Mr. Christopherson said. “Let’s make no mistake, that question in the House was a personal attack and that’s why I made the statement I just did. If you attack me, I’m from Hamilton, if you attack me, you’re going to get attacked back, and that was a dishonourable, unnecessary attack, and I’ve just responded.”
Mr. Byrne, who was also angry about the way Mr. Christopherson singled him out after the session, declined to comment on specific aspects of the NDP MP’s outburst, but questioned whether Mr. Christopherson was being neutral.
“These are legitimate points being raised in the House,” Mr. Byrne said of his questions to Mr. Christopherson in the Commons question period.
“No direct attack was taken to the chair,” Mr. Byrne told The Hill Times.
“The chair has a responsibility to be impartial and to be fair minded,” he said. “His comments made publicly about me seem to be less than impartial, and I would let Mr. Christopherson weigh whether or not he is proud of his performance as a chair.”
Despite the opposition division, NDP MP Malcolm Allen (Welland, Ont.) said he believes the inquiry into Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s scathing report on the F-35 procurement project will continue despite government plans to draw it to a halt.
Mr. Allen said he will insist the committee inquiry continues, and termed it “criminal” on the part of the government to try to end it.
“I think it’s actually criminal, in the sense that this is the absolute file that Canadians want to keep open, they want to know exactly what happened, who knew what, when they knew it and who should they hold accountable,” Mr. Allen told reporters.
Mr. Allen later declined to discuss any motions that his party may have moved behind closed doors and reiterated that he has made it clear he wants the hearings to continue.
"I was not at the first in-camera session, so when all of this started, including Saxton's motion, I wasn't there and clearly he's made some public declarations as to what to do," Mr. Allen said.
"I think you've seen me perform before at that committee and my goal has always been to get the committee to function well, to get the necessary information from witnesses and get the witnesses that we believe we need to come before us," he said.
"And I have been willing to be reasonable around requests of when we should end and we shouldn't, and so I'm taking the same approach. In my view, we're not finished but I'm not taking a hard line that says this thing has to simply go on forever just because I can stick the proverbial sharp stick in the government's eye," Mr. Allen said.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
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