Categories: Inside the Queensway

Bernier Affair: The Lady Vanishes (or, at the very least, fails to materialize)

Well, well, well: Following in the footsteps of certain former prime ministers, Ms. Couillard…

by kadyomalley on Monday, June 16, 2008 3:20pm - 0 Comments

Well, well, well: Following in the footsteps of certain former prime ministers, Ms. Couillard has reportedly, through her lawyer, declined an invitation to testify before the Public Safety committee later this week. Or so the rumour goes …

If that turns out to be the case, there’s no reason why the committee can’t call on the Speaker to issue a warrant to compel her to appear via subpoena. ITQ is heading down to stake out the committee room, and will report back as soon as we have confirmation of this latest twist in the tale.

(We will also restrain ourselves, with difficulty, from I-Told-You-So’ing the Ethics committee for letting the aforementioned former prime minister set such an unfortunate precedent in witness recalcitrance. If you let one person get away with this sort of disrespect for the House, you risk encouraging similar behaviour in future.)

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  • Ottawa Guy

    A Speaker’s warrant would not be necessary. The Committee can issue it’s own summons, and a failure to respond would be dealt with as a contempt. A Speaker’s warrant was issued in the Schreiber case because he was incarcerated.

  • http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

    You are entirely right!

  • ham

    if they were to get a quickie civil marriage before the committee she won’t have to testify :)

  • dan in van

    … And then Maxime would be able to get into the witness protection area, like Michael Chong and Rona Ambrose!

  • Wayne

    So far the best part of this story is when her old boyfriend sent his regards to maxime feeling sorry for him and said something along the line that this lady is a heat seeking missile for men in power and at least he doesn’t feel as stupid for being and I quote : Taken In : by her, ROFL LMAO – that works on so many levels!

  • Pingback: Why do I feel like I’ve posted this before? : Inside the Queensway : Macleans.ca Blog Central

  • Motor

    Why has Bernier not been charged with the crime of leaving secret documents in an unsecured location?

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