The competing offers for special committees got even more crowded yesterday as the Liberals suggested their own possible special committee to examine pandemic spending, in a bid to jam both the Conservatives and NDP as they make their own offers. The Conservatives, you may recall, are employing a stunt to call for a special “anti-corruption committee,” as though the penny-ante bullshit that happens here were actual corruption that happens in other countries, and called explicitly for the purpose of decrying any lack of support for this committee idea as being in support of corruption. The NDP have their own proposal for a pandemic spending committee, but it was intended as a kind of super-committee to draw in not only the WE Imbroglio, but to revisit other non-scandals such as the Rob Silver affair (which the Ethics Commissioner declined to investigate), or the fact that one of the many pandemic procurement contracts went to a company whose owner is a former Liberal MP (whose departure was a bit huffy and drawn out at the time, one may recall).

The Liberal plan is to offer a “serious committee” to do “serious work,” which is a political gambit in and of itself – citing that if the other parties don’t agree to this particular committee (whose terms of reference one expects will be fairly narrowly circumscribed), then it proves that they are simply motivated by partisan gamesmanship rather than helping Canadians. And they’re not wrong – that’s exactly what both the Conservatives and NDP are looking for, at a point where they can only expect diminishing returns the longer that they drag on the WE Imbroglio (though, caveat, they do have a legitimate point in the Finance committee about producing the unredacted documents because that was the committee order that the government didn’t obey, and risks finding themselves in contempt of parliament over; the Ethics Committee demands are going outside of that committee’s mandate).

To add to the possible drama, the Liberals are also contemplating making the Conservatives’ upcoming Supply Day motion on their committee demand a confidence vote, which will wind up forcing the hands of one of the opposition parties into voting against it because nobody wants an election (and that could mean a number of Conservative MPs suddenly having “connectivity issues” and being unable to vote on the motion to ensure its demise). Of course, there is always the possibility of an accident – that seat counts weren’t done properly and the government could defeat itself, though that’s highly unlikely in the current circumstances. Nevertheless, this game-playing is where we’re at, seven months into the pandemic.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau insists that the federal government has been engaged in ending the dispute between Mi’kmaw and commercial fishers, but everyone expects more.
• Several ministers and Indigenous leaders took part in a meeting to discuss how to combat systemic racism in healthcare – knowing the federal levers are very limited.
• The government is challenging industry to come up with either compostable or recyclable PPE, given how much of it consists of single-use plastic.
• Applications for the new pandemic-relief benefits are slower and glitchier than anticipated (though this should not surprise anyone).
• The government is warning of a phishing scam designed to look like it’s a procurement offer from Public Services and Procurement.
• The Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force have now issued their orders around rooting out far-right extremists and hateful conduct in their ranks.
• The Bank of Canada is starting to wind down three of their emergency programmes that were created in response to the pandemic.
• The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the RCMP’s pension plan discriminated in not allowing (mostly women) job-sharers to buy back pensionable time.
• The Liberals want the Conservatives to fire their York Centre candidate for calling Kamala Harris “transracial,” while the Marci Ien is accused of being a 9/11 Truther.
• Here is the transcript of Paul Wells’ interview with Jonathan Wilkinson.
• Kevin Carmichael calls on parliament to do its job and actually debate the Bank of Canada’s mandate at the upcoming review, rather than just blindly renew it.
• My weekend column looks at the drama around Senate committee rules, and the irony of the Independent Senators Group trying to curtail senators’ independence.

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