PMO’s recent influence on Senate Internal Economy Committee unprecedented, says Lowell Murray

The political culture has changed so much so that the Prime Minister’s Office has tentacles where it doesn’t belong, as documented by the RCMP investigation into the Senate expenses scandal showing PMO officials tried to change a report from the Senate Internal Economy Committee—something that was unheard of 20 years ago, says a recently-retired Senator.

“The culture has really changed. There’s always been some attempt to persuade your own colleagues to go along, God knows I tried, but that’s the culture. In the Senate, in the House of Commons, Members stand up and they’re reading from a script that’s been prepared for them by some people over there in the PMO,” said Lowell Murray, a former Progressive Conservative Senator who served in the Upper Chamber for 32 years, including seven-and-a-half as the Senate government leader, in a telephone interview with The Hill Times last week. “In general, it is a team sport, but they should never allow themselves—especially a committee like Internal Economy—to be so controlled that the PMO would be reaching in to decide what should be in a committee report, on a matter internal to the Senate. It wasn’t as if it was a big trade agreement or a bunch of Criminal Code amendments or something that the government would have a legitimate interest in.”