“He’s just making a fuss,” said Thomas Hall, who clerked House of Commons committees for more than 20 years before retiring in 2007.
Last Tuesday’s public House Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee fell into confusion after Ms. O’Malley approached Liberal committee member Scott Andrews (Avalon, Nfld.) during the meeting for what she thought was copy of a motion Mr. Andrews was due to introduce.
Ms. O’Malley later told the chair, NDP MP Pierre-Luc Dusseault (Sherbrooke, Que.), that she did not get a copy of the motion. Mr. Andrews told The Hill Times the same thing.
The document that had just been distributed to committee members turned out not to be a motion but a draft report that would be discussed after the group went in-camera.
“I assumed that it was a motion, and, as is my usual practice, I immediately headed for the nearest available source—in this case, opposition staffers, and the nearest opposition MP— to get a copy before someone moved to go in-camera, which, these days, usually happens as soon as the witnesses leave the table,” Ms. O’Malley wrote in a blog post explaining the incident the next day, in which she also apologized for any confusion and said she respects Parliamentary rules.
“When I realized that it was actually a draft report… I backed off immediately, but not quite quickly enough to dodge the resulting point of order,” she said.
Mr. Andrews said that the draft report was not marked to indicate that it was confidential, and that the situation was “a simple misunderstanding.”
Mr. Del Mastro (Peterborough, Ont.), a member of the House Ethics Committee, raised a point of order in the House June 5, alleging that Ms. O’Malley had asked to see the in-camera report, and that Mr. Andrews had provided it. Ms. O’Malley has denied this.
Afterwards Mr. Del Mastro told reporters that both Mr. Andrews and Ms. O’Malley had broken House rules. Mr. Del Mastro said he wants the House Speaker to clarify the rules that govern the media during committee meetings and said he does not think journalists should be allowed to approach committee members while the committee is under way and in progress.
“A member of the media, while a committee was under way, approached one—the Liberal Member on the committee, requested to see and then did view an in-camera document,” Mr. Del Mastro said. “That’s a breach by the Member of Parliament, but it’s also against the rules that govern the media at committee meetings. Media members understand—I’ve never seen a media member every walk up, approach a member of Parliament while committee is—is ongoing, while witnesses are providing testimony. I’ve never seen a member of the media walk up to a Member of Parliament and request to see what was just handed to them on their desk and then be furnished with it, to make things somewhat worse. So it in my view is entirely inappropriate. I’ve asked the speaker to rule on it.”
He continued: “When a meeting is public, you, as a member of the media, cannot go up and approach a member of Parliament at the desk and request a document that’s before them, you cannot. You cannot interview them, you cannot ask them questions. It’s contrary to the rules and procedures of government committee. I think that’s pretty standard understanding and I think that this specific member of the media acted inappropriately.”
Mr. Hall disagreed with Mr. Del Mastro. He said that there are actually no formal rules governing how journalists can interact with MPs at committee. A review of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice also did not uncover any rules for the media at committees.
Mr. Hall said that he couldn’t remember if he’s ever seen a reporter approach an MP sitting at a committee table while a meeting was in progress, as it would not have been likely to cause a stir.
Mr. Hall added that as clerk he was regularly approached by reporters looking for documents during sessions.
Both Ms. O’Malley and Mr. Del Mastro declined to comment further on the situation.
When Mr. Del Mastro introduced his point of order Speaker Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) said that the committee would have to table a report on the incident in the House before he considered it.
Observers noted that in raising the issue in the House Mr. Del Mastro might have taken the situation too far.
Mr. Andrews said that Mr. Del Mastro was “picking a fight” with the media, and that he would have been well aware that the Speaker wouldn’t be in a position to act without a committee report.
“Mr. Del Mastro knew exactly what the process was. This was him wanting to pick a fight with somebody else again. If it’s not the NDP, if it’s not the Liberals, they’ll pick a fight with the media. He knew exactly—exactly—how this process works,” he said.
Mr. Hall noted that the committee was the appropriate forum for the issue, “and stop right there.”
In his point of order, Mr. Del Mastro did acknowledge that the matter was the committee’s responsibility.
Mr. Hall said that Mr. Del Mastro was right to be initially concerned that the report had been leaked, but that it should have soon become clear to him that it wasn’t the case.
Parliament Hill reporter Aaron Wherry, who writes for Maclean’s and worked with Ms. O’Malley before she moved to CBC, said that the matter could likely have easily been cleared up before Mr. Del Mastro filed a point of order.
He added that Ms. O’Malley has enormous respect for Parliament.
“I don’t think there is anyone who could possibly question her reverence for the institution,” he said.
Mr. Andrews made light of the situation last week, while also raising his concern about Parliamentary secrecy.
“Oh I’m scared, I’m being approached by a member of the media. What is this place coming to when a member of the media can’t come up to you and ask you a question?” he said.
The House Ethics Committee, which is studying privacy and social media, was slated to deal in-camera with a question of privilege in its subsequent meeting last week, but Mr. Dusseault said that because the matter was discussed in committee he couldn’t go into detail about the status of the point of order.
He did say that the matter was still open to discussion.
Mr. Del Mastro had told reporters that he would make sure that the committee reported to the House.
Mr. Wherry said that there has been “a certain tension” surrounding in camera meetings this Parliamentary session, the first since the Conservatives won a majority.
Opposition Parliamentarians and the media have accused the Conservatives of using their majorities on committees to drive meetings in-camera whenever something uncomfortable comes up.
The House Ethics Committee has held whole or partial meetings in camera 28 times this session, from a total of 44 meetings as of June 7, much of the time to deal with committee business such as planning for future witnesses.
Mr. Hall said in the past committees used to do this planning in-camera in separate meetings of steering committees. These sub-committees worked by a consensus, and their decisions were public in reports to the committee that could be amended. Though planning subcommittees are still used, nowadays committees often deal with in-camera business during their regular meetings.
For a time, committee business and planning was done in public, said Mr. Hall, because many MPs “felt uncomfortable” going in-camera, but now the trend is reversing.
“The Conservatives are uncomfortable with debating some of these motions in public and there’s been a bit of a tendency to, ‘Let’s get back in-camera, the way we used to years ago,’” he said.
Mr. Wherry, who follows the ins and outs of Question Period for Maclean’s, said that he doesn’t think relations between the media and politicians are particularly bad right now.
“I don’t think there’s any sort of more tension than there usually is, and I suspect this will be a kind of minor blip that gets forgotten,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Del Mastro, the Parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.), is being investigated for allegedly exceeding his spending limit and his contribution limit in relation to a $21,000 personal cheque he used to pay for services from Holinshed Research Group following the 2008 election campaign, according to a story broken last week by The Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News.
Mr. Del Mastro told CBC TV last Wednesday night that his audited campaign expenses—which showed a payment of only $1,575 to Holinshed—were accurate and complete. Mr. Del Mastro said the rest of the money was for other work. “They undertook a small amount of work during the campaign, during the actual campaign writ,” he said. “That’s reflected in that campaign expenditure. They did also undertake some work at various times for my association. They would be on separate statements.”
The NDP and the Liberals say Mr. Del Mastro should step aside as his party’s spokesman on Elections Canada issues while he’s under investigation.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Jessica Bruno
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