Friday, April 20, 2012

All The Prime Minister's Men



With the Public Accountants Committee getting ready to take up the F35 fraud, a fight is brewing over which witnesses will be allowed to testify before the committee. The Hill Times reports that Andrew Saxton, the ranking Conservative on the committee, has revealed the government's game plan: "The government is ready to call deputy ministers of the departments involved, but lower-level officials, likely including project managers, would be selected by deputy ministers."

However, they will not accept witnesses nominated by the NDP or the Liberals. One of those witnesses is Phillippe Legasse, of the University of Ottawa. Legasse has said the whole F35 procurement mess could not have happened without cabinet approval:

To be able to get through, to get Industry [Canada] to quiet down about the IRBs [Industrial and Regional Benefits], to get Public Works to just accept that letter, to get TBS [Treasury Board Secretariat] to accept this and to make it through Cabinet, there is no question that the government was complicit in this, and this is something they accepted,” he said.

The Conservatives are doing everything in their power to prevent that kind of opinion from finding its way to the parliamentary record. Liberal MP Gerry Byrne has rightly noted that the prime minister's men

"are looking to try to control the witness list. This is about trying to control the message, this is a political dynamic. There’s a political piece at play here, which members of the executive knew what when. All the president’s men sat at that table just a few minutes ago and all the president’s men made sure that the Prime Minister was protected.”


Recent reports suggest that key information has been erased from the Conservative Party's database, making it more difficult to trace those robocalls. Have you heard this story before?

10 comments:

thwap said...

Parliament is a joke. Using their stolen majority to cover-up their campaign of lies.

We all heard stephen harper lying, over and over again.

It's no mystery how far up the chain of command it goes when the prime minister was blatantly lying.

The opposition should just boycott this farce. What's the point?

Maybe they should just accuse harper of lying outside of Parliament and dare him to sue.

Owen Gray said...

Jack Layton said it didn't take long to learn that he couldn't take Stephen Harper at his word, thwap.

Yet 35% of us still believe him. Some people are easy marks.

Steve said...

Look what is happening in Democratic Hungary. We are next?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/the-new-hungarian-secret-police/

Owen Gray said...

Thanks for the link, Steve. Nixon was paranoid. It appears that Harper suffers from the same illness.

Who knows what awaits us.

Tossing Pebbles in the Stream said...

It a parliamentary committee cannot do it's job, perhaps we need a public inquiry with subpoena
powers.

Owen Gray said...

Something tells me, Phillip, that the Harper government is going to have to spend a lot of time in court defending its actions.

Anonymous said...

You better keep an eye on Thwap there. Word is he is planning on killing himself soon.

Owen Gray said...

Like a lot of us who didn't vote for Harper, thwap is frustrated by the damage Harper is doing.

My hunch, though, is that -- like Nixon -- Stephen will have to add his own name to his enemies list.

Anonymous said...

I doubt that. Thwap is going to hang himself or something. He has said so often enongh. He is crazy!

Owen Gray said...

Don't give up on thwap. Frustration is different than resignation.