Mr. Rathgeber didn’t know it then but around the same time that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office was working to clean up the mess around improper expense claims in spring 2013, staffers also began their “battle of wills” with the then-dissenting Conservative MP over whitewashing his private member’s bill on public service salary disclosure.
The bill, C-461, the CBC and Public Service Disclosure and Transparency Act, was supported by the Conservative caucus but, for what Mr. Rathgeber understands to be political reasons, the PMO instructed MPs on a House committee to amend it, raising the threshold for disclosing salaries from $160,200 a year to $444,000.
It ultimately led Mr. Rathgeber to resign from caucus and write his book, Irresponsible Government: The Decline of Parliamentary Democracy in Canada. He’s now running for re-election in the Alberta riding of Edmonton-St. Albert on his two-year record as an Independent MP.
The evidence being released at the trial in Ottawa showing the heavy hand of the Prime Minister’s staff into House and Senate business is “validating,” he told The Hill Times last week.
A draft of a secret memo from former chief of staff Nigel Wright was released last week as evidence at the Duffy trial. Addressed to the Prime Minister, former PMO deputy chief of staff Joanne McNamara, former director of issues management Chris Woodcock, and Parliamentary affairs manager Patrick Rogers, the draft briefed the PM on the “suggested” response they were preparing to a letter from then-Senate leader Marjory LeBreton. The heavily edited letter lays out the issues the PMO was having with Sen. LeBreton’s caucus control at the time.
“What we have discovered is that the lines of communication and levers that are available to us on the House side, simply are not in place on the Senate side,” it reads, referring to the PMO’s access and influence within the Senate caucus to make sure government messaging was followed and comparing it to the channels the PMO has into the House’s Parliamentary business through the House leader and government whip.
The memo also outlines frustration with how Ms. LeBreton’s office handled business outside of the residency issues. This included Senate reports being published with recommendations that didn’t align with party policy, like investing in aboriginal education and creating a national pharma-care plan.
Contained in the emails between Sen. Duffy and a handful of PMO and Senate staffers is also a version of the Senate Internal Economy Committee’s audit report with edited changes tracked. These changes appear to be from both Mr. Wright and Mr. Woodcock, who in an email to Mr. Wright, Mr. Novak, and Mr. Perrin dated Feb. 27, 2013, wrote: “I have rewritten the report extensively in the attached version. I did not change the Committee’s recommendations.”
Mr. Rathgeber said the PMO staffers’ handling of the situation was all too familiar and speaks to a “culture of invincibility” among some of the PMO staff.
“It’s shocking, but it validates everything I’ve ever said about their modus operandi. They have no ethical, or sometimes legal, boundaries and I would say without any doubt that a Senate report into expenses is a higher level of improper interference but that level of micromanagement goes on in House of Commons reports all the time,” he said.
Opposition members have long alleged that since the Conservatives have had a majority on every committee since 2011, no committee report is tabled until the PMO signs off on it.
“There is no part in the Ottawa bubble that they think is beyond their reach or their ability, quite frankly, to manipulate or control,” said Mr. Rathgeber.
“The fact that Parliament is supposed to be independent from the government and is supposed to be a check on the government is completely perverted in their view. They don’t see Parliament, either the House of Commons or the Senate, as being a check on executive power. They see the government caucus as an extension of PMO communications and their rubber stamp.”
The documents also provide a glimpse into the Prime Minister’s involvement in the Senate expenses issue. An email dated Feb. 19, 2013, with the subject line, “Return on Senate Residency Note” from Mr. Harper’s then-principal secretary, Ray Novak, quotes what Mr. Harper had relayed to him in terms of what he’d like to see happen.
“I feel very strongly on Option 1. Had I known we were going down this road I would have shut it down long before this memo,” it reads. The email was in response to a memo from Mr. Harper’s inner circle that offered two choices on how to proceed: either the “traditional committee process” of hearings and a report, or passing a Senate motion declaring all Senators residents of their appointed province.
Keith Beardsley, a former deputy chief of staff for issues management to Mr. Harper from 2006 to 2008, told The Hill Times that, during his time in the office, that level of awareness on Mr. Harper’s part about his staff’s involvement in Parliamentary business was uncommon. He said he couldn’t speculate on how reflective it is of the Prime Minister’s involvement now.
“He can say, ‘Go take care of something’ and he expects you’re going to take care of it… At least when I was there he never said, ‘You have to do this, this, this and this.’ He was never into that type of detail, he’d say ‘Go handle it,’ or ‘Go fix it,’” said Mr. Beardsley.
“But he never actually directly issued instructions as to how we were supposed to do things or what we were supposed to say.”
Mr. Beardsley said that near the end of his time in the PMO he could see a shift toward the office “tightening up” and becoming more proactive in its “micromanagement” of issues. He has looked through the emails himself and considers them proof of what was speculated about the change in management under the succession of chiefs of staff leading up to Mr. Wright.
“The set-up tends to reflect the management style that’s in place, plus the skill level of the individuals there,” he said. “The staff that you have, from at least what you can see here, they may have been on the Hill for a while but I don’t see them as being long-time sort of issues management people.”
What he found most surprising in the evidence is just how much of the back and forth was done by email, without thinking much of it, he said.
“My generation, you wouldn’t have sent an e-mail, you would have picked up the phone and spoken to someone or walked down the hall and popped into their office and said, ‘Well what do you think about this?’” Mr. Beardsley said.
Mr. Rathgeber said what’s most troubling to him is how many other files could have been handled in a similar way.
When asked about the documents tabled in court that show the level of involvement from his staff throughout the scandal, last week Mr. Harper repeated that there were two individuals responsible—Mr. Duffy and Mr. Wright—and that they are being held accountable. When asked whether Mr. Novak still had his trust, Mr. Harper told reporters: “When people are working for me, they have my confidence. If they didn’t have my confidence, they wouldn’t be working for me.”
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com/
Author: Rachel Aiello
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