Another reason for Harper's proroguing Parliament?

In the midst of a blog posting on whether or not Parliament has actually been prorogued yet or not (it has to do with when the PM actually makes the official request to the GG, whose approval is generally a given), Macleans.ca’s Kady O’Malley makes an interesting and as yet otherwise overlooked observation about another potential motivation: killing potentially embarrassing committee hearings.

… the House Public Accounts Committee…is supposed to hold two days of hearings on the RCMP pension scandal later this week.

If Parliament is prorogued, those meetings are cancelled, since at that point, the committee no longer officially exists. But if it doesn't happen until next week, when the PM is back in town, it's full speed ahead for all concerned...

Makes the timing of the proroguing rather interesting, doesn’t it? If Parliament has indeed been officially prorogued, which as Kady writes is a bit unclear at the moment, then these pesky hearings that the Cons would rather not have happening would magically disappear since this committee, like all others, will go poof.

No unsavory headlines generated. Among those scheduled to testify this week are/were Stockwell Day and new RCMP Commissioner William Elliot. Harper can stop it all with one phone-call to Madame Jean he could make at any minute.

The Cons won’t even need their pesky how to disrupt committee meetings manual for some time. If will be quite awhile before the Defence committee can look into the cover-up of Afghan detainee documents, for example, among other troubling issues the Cons would rather not have committees shine lights on.

And Duffy thought it had something to do with the Ontario election…

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Where’s your balls, media? And paging RCMP Commissioner Elliot

The gall of the Harper Conservatives never ceases to amaze me. This story is astounding:

CHARLOTTETOWN (CP) _ RCMP officers, acting on orders from the Prime Minister’s Office, evicted journalists from a hotel lobby Wednesday to prevent them from approaching Conservative MPs to discuss the country’s governance. While tour bus groups freely wandered the lobby of Charlottetown’s Delta Hotel, plainclothes Mounties rebuffed reporters who had convened for the Conservative party’s three-day summer strategy session.

“There’s a time and a place for the media,” a Mountie told a small knot of print reporters, making it clear the issue was not a matter of security but of communications strategy. The unnamed officer said he was acting on orders from the Prime Minister’s Office.
(more)

Forgive me for getting worked-up, but as a journalist myself I take these things seriously. I have two main points to make:

To my media friends: Are you seriously going to stand for this bullshit? You have lawyers, right? Have them get their asses to court right now and file an injunction or something. I don’t see how it can possibly be legal to bar members of the media from a place that is freely accessible to any other member of the public. There is something in the charter for rights about a free press, isn’t there? Fight this tooth and nail or you’ve officially become Pravda. At the very least one of you should force the issue and get yourself arrested. I’d be curious to see what charge they come up with.

To my RCMP friends: Since when did you become political police? I mean, seriously. Your job is to keep the public safe, and to keep the peace. Not to be a tool of Steve Harper’s communications strategy. Is this what you signed-up for, protecting media shy politicians from microphones? What law, pray tell, were you enforcing here? The police are independent in this country; you don't take orders from the PMO. Just say No.

Back when Harper appointed William Elliot, a man with strong Conservative ties, as the new RCMP Commissioner I said I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt but he would have a careful line to tread and would need to be careful not to be seen as Harper's man. Time to step up Bill.

Moving on, get this ridiculous explination from caucus chair Rahim Jaffer:

The buffer zone was attributed by Jaffer to the presence of wives and children of some of the MPs.

“We hope there will be some respect for families and others because it is a little bit different and having the cameras there, having the journalists there sometimes (is) intimidating for some of these people who don’t get a chance . . . ” he said, leaving the sentence unfinished.

I don’t doubt he left it unfinished, he must have realized how much of a massive idiot he sounded like and decided it better to just shut the hell up. What’s the old saying, better to keep your mouth closed and be thought an idiot then open your mouth and remove all doubt? Too late Rahim.

And here’s Harper’s communications chief, Sandra Buckler:

"It's quite normal for there to be private areas and then areas where the media are,'' she said by e-mail.

Sure, Sandra. But not the dammed lobby of the hotel! Get serious.

Also weighing in are: Paul Wells, Garth Turner, Liberal Arts and Minds, Impolitical and John Murney,

UPDATE:

Here’s another quote from the RCMP, via CTV:

"No cameras, no mics," one plainclothed RCMP officer told CTV News on Wednesday. "That is what the party asked."

So “the party” asks and the RCMP jumps, is that how it works?

And reading more of CTV’s coverage, I see this evening Jaffer is now changing his story:

However, later in the evening, Jaffer said the RCMP made the decision based on security concerns.

OK, so we have Jaffer saying the decision to bar the media, but not the public, from the lobby of a hotel was made by the RCMP for security reasons. And we have the RCMP saying this is what “the party asked” and that they were “acting on orders from the Prime Minister’s Office.”

Now obviously those two versions of events don’t mesh. So the question becomes who is lying, the RCMP or Rahim Jaffer and the Conservative Party? And who really ordered the crackdown? Are the Cons going to hide behind the RCMP to trample the public's right to know like they're hiding behind military members and civil servants at DND over the Afghan detainee file?

It's an interesting pattern.

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On Elliot’s Tory ties

I said earlier that I’m willing to give William Elliot a shot and the benefit of the doubt as next commissioner of the RCMP. While that still stands after learning the information below this now appears to be an even riskier appointment for Harper than originally thought.

But Mr. Elliott's Tory ties predate even his work with the Mulroney government.

In 1984, he was practising law with a large firm, but was also the president of the Ottawa West Progressive Conservative riding association when David Daubney was elected MP.

As far back as 1981, he was working on the campaign of provincial Progressive Conservative MPP Reuben Baetz, a cabinet minister in the governments of Bill Davis and Frank Miller.

I like the decision to go outside the ranks of the RCMP for the commissioner. But given the added scrutiny that such a decision brings it’s pretty risky for Harper to pick someone with such longstanding and obvious partisan ties to his own party.

A civilian commissioner is going to be under the microscope as it is. Elliot’s political ties will ratchet-up the scrutiny even further, and potentially make his already onerous task even more difficult. If Elliot has to make another decision like the income trust investigation announcement, for example, now it will be viewed through a political prism because of his partisan ties, rightly or wrongly. It puts him in a pretty tight spot.

I wish him well, because he has quite the tightrope to walk.

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I was so close to saying nice things about Deceivin' Steven!

I'm a Liberal partisan, I admit that freely, but I do try to at least somewhat fair in my writings and (however grudgingly) give credit to the other parties when it’s due. And hand to God I was ready to write an glowing post giving Harper credit for his appointment of William Elliott as the new RCMP chief. I was so close.

On the surface, I like this move. Appointing an outsider to head the RCMP, someone with a proven history of management experience and a former senior civil servant, is a great move. And, despite the inevitable protests that will come from certain elements of the force, bringing in an outsider with management skills is exactly what is needed to turn the force around. It’s the only way to combat the insider/old boys mentality in the force.

My only concern was to wonder if a career civil servant, used to taking orders his political masters, would be able to make the jump to leading the RCMP. Because the force is necessarily politically independent. Being a deputy minister isn’t quite the same as running the RCMP, as police chief you need to be willing to tell the politicians to take a hike. I was, however, willing to give Elliot the benefit of the doubt.

But then I read that Elliott isn’t just a former bureaucrat, but also has very strong Conservative ties. He was chief of staff to Mulroney’s deputy Prime Minister; you don’t get that job without strong political credentials.

Granted, he also served briefly as national security advisor to Paul Martin, so hopefully Elliott can/will be able to put partisanship aside here and do his job. And certainly the qualifications are there otherwise, so it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make a Bush/Harriet Myers comparison.

So, I’ll still give Elliott the benefit of the doubt and wish him well in taking on this challenge, but it’s not the perfect appointment it once seemed to be. Elliott is going to be watched, and scrutinized, very closely. Because the last thing the RCMP needs is a political loyalist/yes man at its helm.

Will Elliott be able to tell Harper to shove it when necessary? Time will tell, but I hope so.

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