The outcome of yesterday’s “emergency” meeting of the Commons ethics committee was not unexpected – that the Liberal majority on the committee declined to pursue the matter, and it would go no further, while the Conservatives and NDP wailed and gnashed their teeth to the assembled media outside of the room, ensuring that their media luminaries like Lisa Raitt and Pierre Poilievre were there for the cameras instead of their regular committee members. Also predictable was Elizabeth May’s moral preening that she wanted this to be “non-partisan,” which was never going to happen. It was not unexpected that “maverick” Liberal Nathaniel Erskine- Smith would stand apart and vote to hear from the Commissioner – albeit for different reasons than the Conservatives wanted, which for Erskine-Smith was to get answers as to his thinking because Erskine-Smith is in the camp that the Commissioner got the law wrong (and he’s a lawyer, so he’s perhaps better equipped for this kind of statutory interpretation than some other critics).

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1164239833235111936

But there was one completely bonkers event that happened that should be alarming for everyone involved, which was when Lisa Raitt moved a motion to have the committee summon journalist Aaron Wherry in order to get his notes and interviews with Trudeau for his newly released book, because Raitt claims that Trudeau breached Cabinet confidence in how he detailed his meetings with Jody Wilson-Raybould. First of all, the notion that he can breach Cabinet confidence is absurd because he’s the prime minister – he can pretty much determine what he wants to keep confidential; and secondly, summoning a journalist to testify at committee is a very, very bad and stupid thing, and it’s utterly mind-boggling that Raitt didn’t see this. It’s even more egregious that Peter Kent, former journalist (and now profligate conspiracy theory monger) voted in favour of Raitt’s motion. Fortunately, the NDP had enough sense to distance themselves from this huge overreach, but it’s galling that she would even propose it in the first place. (Also ridiculous is this notion that there is some kind of criminal obstruction of justice at play, but that’s also the narrative that they’re putting forward as they performatively demand that the RCMP investigate – because calling on the RCMP to investigate your political rivals isn’t totally a banana republic move). Politics and playing to the cameras can make MPs do dumb things, but this was alarming in how far they were willing to take this to score points.

https://twitter.com/EmmMacfarlane/status/1164261091591053313

Meanwhile, Chantal Hébert reads the polls to see that the Commissioner’s report hasn’t really hurt the Liberals, meaning that pursuing this has diminishing returns for the Conservatives, and she parses what that could mean in the weeks ahead.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau gave a foreign policy speech in which he took shots at the Conservatives for flirting with populism and having Canada sniping on the sidelines.
• Another Trudeau interview in Aaron Wherry’s book cites that he says that a failure in this election would make climate change a political “loser” in the future.
• Trans Mountain is sending out the notices to its contractors that they are gearing up for construction. (There goes another election narrative).
• We got a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at the plans to arrest Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver back in December.
• ACOA wrote off two loans to Irving’s gypsum business, citing that they fulfilled their conditions.
• CBC crunches the numbers on the political ads seen on Facebook so far this year.
• In Peterborough, Andrew Scheer accused Trudeau and Maryam Monsef of “just mak[ing] stuff up.” Apparently, he said this with a straight face.
• Country music singer George Canyon is now nominated to run for the Conservatives in Central Nova (where the previous candidate bailed days ago).
• Mark Jaccard models the Conservatives’ climate “plan,” and well, it’s about as effective as one might expect, and yes, it would see emissions continue to rise.
• Martin Patriquin experiences some déjà vu with Jason Kenney’s positioning himself as a bulwark against separatists, just like the Quebec Liberals did.
• Matt Gurney boggles at the fact that Western countries still haven’t grasped how to deal with asymmetric warfare, as evidenced by the Jack Letts situation.
• Chris Selley delves into the way that the elections laws privilege parties over third parties advertising issues (not unnecessarily, I say).
• Andrew Coyne reminds people that Elections Canada isn’t responsible for creating the law they have to enforce about third party advertising.
• Likewise, Colby Cosh notes that while that law is bad, it would be worse if Elections Canada had approval over which political opinions were acceptable or not.

Odds and ends:

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