I mentioned this yesterday in passing, but I’m going to revisit it today, which is the way that the Liberals are handling the issue of parliamentary secretaries at committees. And yes, they have stuck by their promise not to put them on committees officially, and they have written into their rulebook on government accountability and transparency that these parliamentary secretaries won’t be able to vote on said committees either – but they’re still showing up to them, and that is a problem. We saw under the previous government what happened under the previous government, where the parliamentary secretaries were on the committee, and their designated PMO staffer – used to help them with their additional duties – basically ran the committees, telling them how to vote, what motions to put forward, etcetera. And thus, committees started behaving not like independent bodies designed to scrutinise bills or hold the government to account for its plans, but rather to act as branch plants of ministers’ offices. It was a terrible perversion of what our system is supposed to do. The Liberals, so keen to look like they’re not emulating the Harper government’s practices, are nevertheless de facto carrying them on. Just because the parliamentary secretary isn’t voting, they and their PMO staffer are still in the room, directing the government side, even if they happen to call it “advice” and “offering the resources of the Privy Council” and all of those happy, clappy words. And while on Procedure and House Affairs, David Christopherson shouts himself into an apoplectic frenzy over it, he really has little room to talk, considering how the centralisation of operations in the NDP in the previous parliament meant that they had their own staffers from the leaders’ offices directing their MPs, providing scripts for them in the committee, and the like. Seems to me that it’s not really helping MPs be independent or letting them do their work without interference either (but this is also what happens when you get a caucus full of accidental MPs who don’t know what they’re doing, and that lack of experience made it easier to condition them to behave as the leader’s office wanted for the duration of that parliament). With the number of newbie MPs on the Liberal benches, that temptation is certainly going to be there as well – that because they’re so new, they’re going to need a lot of guidance, and hey, who better to provide it than the parliamentary secretary? No. Just no. This kind of thing needs to stop, and the Liberals promised that they were going to be better than this. So far, that promise to be better is proving to be a bit of a shell game, optics that say openness and transparency and leaning away from centralisation, but the core of it remains. Time to keep the parliamentary secretaries from the committee room, unless they’re there to help the minister with testimony. Let’s restore our institutions to their proper functioning for a change.

Good reads:

• The NDP have released their interim election post-mortem, which avoids talking about the role Mulcair in their defeat, or some of their disastrous rollouts.
• Rumour has it that the budget will come down on the week of March 21^st.
• The most expensive CF-18 flyby last year was for the Grey Cup in Winnipeg.
• The lawyer who started the Nadon challenge got spanked by the Federal Court of Appeal for his “gonzo logic” in trying to reclaim more costs.
• The Justice Minister’s briefing book suggests that legalising marijuana is a lower priority item on her agenda.
• More ISIS mission reaction from Gurney, Den Tandt, and a barnburner by Wells.
• Susan Delacourt picks apart Jenni Byrne’s op-ed on the last campaign.

Odds and ends:

Mike Duffy has filled out his ethics disclosure with the Senate, which could signal a planned return, assuming his trial goes his way.

The Chief of the Press Gallery is retiring…and taking up a position of media logistics in the PMO.