In spite of the Liberals proposing a compromise on the release of the Winnipeg Lab documents last week, the Conservatives have rejected the offer, citing that it was “months late,” and that the “will of parliament has not changed.” But this is wholly disingenuous—they did offer another compromise in June before Parliament rose for the summer, and Parliament dissolved before the challenge to the order could reach Federal Court, which may have settled the outstanding question of whether the Security of Information Act fettered parliamentary privilege or not.

This rejection makes it clear that this is not about the information—it’s about political theatre. If it was about the information, they would have let NSICOP review the documents and report back. But no—they first came up with the fiction that they didn’t trust security-trained public servants to properly redact the documents, and then they came up with the fiction that the prime minister redacts NSICOP reports, which he does not and never did, and handwaved about only trusting the Commons’ Law Clerk—who doesn’t have the training or context around national security to know what is a necessary redaction or not—to do redactions. (They also piled onto the same law clerk the redactions from pandemic documents for the health committee in the previous parliament, overloading his office and ensuring that they would never see all of the requested documents). The government provided avenues for the documents to be released, but the Conservatives have consistently decided that theatre was more important (particularly as they fed the “mystery” of these documents into conspiracy theories).

We’ll see how much patience the other parties have for this nonsense—and at this point, it is most definitely nonsense. They were happy enough to embarrass the government pre-election, so we’ll see if they still have the appetite to do so now. But at this point, this no longer has any bearing on accountability or being serious about national security. This is one hundred percent about political theatre, and it would be great if the pundit class of this country could call it out for what it is.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau announced a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics in concert with allies (as O’Toole and the punditocracy ignored that time zones are a Thing).
• Sean Fraser says it could take up to two years to bring all promised 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada because of limited resources in the region.
• The Bank of Canada held rates yesterday, and their forward guidance spells out that they see the path of inflation heading back to two percent by middle 2022.
• The House of Commons has completed their review of claimed medical exemptions by MPs—but won’t release the results because it’s “personal information.”
• MPs voted to create a special committee on probing the Kabul evacuation, but a successful amendment from the Bloc kept it from turning into another witch hunt.
• There is a rift forming within the NDP over the Coastal GasLink pipeline, and whether the federal party has spoken out about their provincial counterparts.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column takes stock of what is happening with Commons and Senate committees to get priority bills passed.
• Kevin Carmichael puts more context to the Bank of Canada’s interest rate decision and forward guidance.
• Paul Wells considers the vacancies in two of the big embassy posts, and the dynamics that Trudeau needs to contemplate while considering replacements.
• Colby Cosh explores the controversy over whether cash from Beatles album sales paid for the development of CT scanners.

Odds and ends:

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