Liveblogging the Ethics committee – Day One, Part 2: At least, unless Doug Finley takes over the keyboard and refuses to leave.

By kadyomalley - Monday, August 11, 2008 at 12:58 PM - 0 Comments

1:52:28 PM
With just a few minutes to go until the afternoon session begins, the Kangaroo Chamber(tm pending) is quiet. *Too quiet.* Wait, no – just exactly quiet enough. The MPs are mostly here, but not engaged in any dramatic battles for free speech and/or democracy; instead, they’re eating lunch and reading the Hill Times.

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Liveblogging the Ethics Committee – Day 1, Part 1: Sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless defeated candidate

By kadyomalley - Monday, August 11, 2008 at 8:37 AM - 0 Comments

For the full witness list plus background bullets, click here. For a refresher course on the spending controversy, check out the ITQ explainerizer.

9:44:09 AM
Fifteen minutes to go and the room is starting to fill up — long after ITQ first arrived, of course, what with our charmingly psychotic delusion that reporters would be lining up the night before to make sure of getting a good seat. When I got here, it was me, the clerk and a very empty room, but now there are at least four of us journalist types, and MPs are starting to wander in. Everyone looks tanned and well-rested so far, but the Tory side of the room is fairly desolate at the moment.

And just as I said that, Mike Wallace materialized, his disarming smile wide as ever. Oh, this is going to be *fun*.

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ITQ Committee Lookahead – If it’s August, this must be the Ethics committee

By kadyomalley - Monday, August 11, 2008 at 7:35 AM - 0 Comments

A quick rundown of the witness list for the first day of a full week of hearings on the Conservative in-and-out election financing scheme (which ITQ will, of course, be liveblogging from 10am onwards):

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Get ready to catch the Committolympic spirit …

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 2:40 PM - 0 Comments

The Official ITQ In-and-Out Investigation Countdown begins now!

UPDATE: By the way, I’m pretty sure that a House committee having to issue 31 summonses as part of a single investigation is a parliamentary record. And yes, I’m already resting my fingers up for the 28 hours of liveblogging that lie in my not all that distant future.

Six Impossible Motions Before Lunchtime: Liveblogging the Ethics committee

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 1:48 PM - 0 Comments

1:55:13 PM
I’ll warn you right now that I offer no guarantees of coherence in what is replacing the placeholder dummy text. This morning really did a number on the slightly summerfied brain of this liveblogger, and I think I’m operating on a lower frequency than normal.

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Back for more: Liveblogging the Ethics committee

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 10:08 AM - 0 Comments

9:50:44 AM
And we’re back – for the second day in the row, ITQ has managed to snag the best seat in the House (well, other than the ones around the committee table) for the second day of hearings into the In and Out affair.

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In and Out: Round and round the conspiracy theories go …

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 8:19 AM - 0 Comments

ITQ will be liveblogging the second day of the In and Out hearings from 10:00 a.m. onwards – gavel to gavel to gavel, including the two hour lunch break. But before we head up to the Hill – gotta get there early in order to snag a good seat, after all – here’s a quick look at how the day could unfold:
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And now, a few very pointed questions from the audience: Liveblogging the Ethics committee's afternoon session

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 1:42 PM - 0 Comments

1:54:11 PM
… And we’re back, or at least on the verge of it – that two hour lunchbreak just flew by, although I did manage to wolf down a balanced and nutritious lunch of — black cherry ice cream. Two scoops. Which I hope answers the question of whether I’m some sort of health nut somewhat definitively.

Marc Mayrand is already in his seat, along with Francois Bernier, his — co-election thingy; I’ve forgotten his title, but he’s a senior staffer at Elections Canada.

They’re only scheduled to do two more hours of questioning — the last two will be spent on committee business, which will mean dealing with David Tilson’s trio of motions, and finalizing the witness list. That could get very interesting indeed, as the chair wants to hold in public, rather than in camera, which is how these things are usually done.
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UPDATE – In and Out Inside Out: Liveblogging the Ethics committee

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 9:12 AM - 0 Comments

UPDATE THINGY: Instead of making this the longest post in the history of macleans.ca, I’m going to switch threads for the afternoon session, so click here for part two.

9:40:42 AM
Twenty minutes to go, and I’m already installed at the media table, having once again shown up early on the assumption that journalists would have slept in line outside the committee room overnight to secure a prime viewing spot, because I apparently haven’t yet figured out that not everyone gets as excited over committees as I do.

(Although this is likely to be a slightly better-attended session than the last meeting I covered, at which I was quite literally the only reporter there.)

Anyway, before they get started, a brief recap for anyone out there who hasn’t been following the story with as obsessive an eye as ITQ: The Ethics committee is about to kick off its long-awaited investigation into the so-called In and Out scandal, an ongoing battle between Elections Canada and the Conservative Party over whether the latter went over the advertising spending limit for advertising during the last election by funneling national ad buys through local campaigns. (For more background, check the FAQ here.)

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Summer school for scandal – An ITQ refresher course on in-and-out (and why it matters)

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 6:15 AM - 0 Comments

With just hours to go before the Ethics committee kicks off its eleven-months-in-the-making investigation into the Conservative in and out election spending scheme, it seems like as good a time as any to re-post the official ITQ In and Out FAQ, which was originally published on April 28, 2008.

What, exactly, are the Conservatives accused of?
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Oh, and just in case there was even a shadow of a doubt in anyone's mind …

By kadyomalley - Monday, July 14, 2008 at 10:32 PM - 0 Comments

Of course I’ll be covering the Ethics committee this week — both days, gavel to gavel; from10am til 6pm – not including the two hour break for lunch and however many hours of Conservative-driven procedural shenanigans Paul Szabo can take before he starts cuts off government members’ microphones.
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Sun, fun and in and out committee hearings – An ITQ liveblogging summer spectacular!

By kadyomalley - Monday, July 7, 2008 at 11:15 AM - 0 Comments

We all knew it was coming – some of us have been counting down the hours, in fact – but still, now it’s official. In the Big Committee Room too — not holed away in West Block, where no one can hear you scream (unless you happen to be David Tilson):
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Bring on the dancing Elections Canada officials!

By kadyomalley - Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 4:34 PM - 0 Comments

Those among you who have been quietly (and not so quietly) concerned that ITQ might suffer serious withdrawal pangs during the summer recess can stop worrying — it turns out that I won’t have to go cold turkey after all.
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Bury my heart at 269 West Block – The very last Ethics committee. Really. Maybe.

By kadyomalley - Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 3:55 PM - 0 Comments

3:29:44 PM
I know I’ve said this before – and I may end up saying it again – but this is almost positively definitely absolutely the last Ethics meeting before the summer break. In fact, it may be my last committee, period, before the summer break. Suddenly, I feel so lost. What will I do with myself without the comforting buzz of a government filibuster?

Then again, they could always bring it back over the summer, should something break wide open on the in and out scandal, or the scourge of veiled voting menaces democracy again.

Man, I miss Procedure and House Affairs.

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Liveblogging Ethics for the possibly very last time: When shall we twelve meet again – in thunder, prorogation or in rain?

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 3:49 PM - 0 Comments

3:28:12 PM
Can you believe this may be the very last time I get to liveblog the Ethics committee before the summer break? If the House rises on Thursday, that is—as everyone seems to think will likely be the case—and they don’t bother scheduling a final meeting for that afternoon. I guess it depends what happens today, really: the in and out motion is still on the table, and that could eat up the whole two hours, plus a few other loose ends to tie up—the letter from Brian Mulroney’s lawyer declining the invitation to make a follow-up appearance and a motion from Pat Martin to do we don’t know what. Well, I don’t know; I expect the committee members have a copy, though.

The mood seems surprisingly buoyant on both sides of the table—the Conservatives, and especially Mike Wallace, are downright giddy with delight. They’re teasing the opposition side over the fate of the in and out motion: “Do you really think it’s going to pass?” Wallace asks Sukh Dhaliwal. “Were you smoking something during the break?”

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Haven't I seen you somewhere before, Gary Goodyear? Liveblogging the Ethics committee Again. Forever.

By kadyomalley - Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 4:43 PM - 0 Comments

It’s only been two days since the threatened all-night Ethics filibuster came to a confusing and cranky temporary halt, but it feels like so much longer. Not that anything was actually accomplished—not at that meeting, dutifully chronicled by ITQ, or since, but so much has happened outside this committee room.

3:31:13 PM
With the meeting having just – as in, this minute – gotten underway, David Tilson moves to adjourn. Well, I guess that gives us some idea what the chances are that we’re going to get out of here anytime soon.

The motion to adjourn is handily defeated, thanks to the serendipitous arrival of the all-important NDP voting bloc in the form of Pat Martin, who was a minute late, thus giving the government a fleeting moment  in which they would have been able to win the vote.  Quick thinking by David Tilson, but not quite quick enough. That’s okay, though—he has a backup plan: a sub-amendment. Unfortunately, what he doesn’t have is a copy of it in both official languages, which he was told, in no uncertain terms, he had to have.

3:37:16 PM
Somehow, Tilson manages to avoid being struck by the lightning of the irony gods when he accuses Carole Lavallée of “delaying tactics” for requesting that the motion be made available in French as well as English. Continue…

So this is it – the final countdown? – Liveblogging the Ethics committee debate on Conservatives' in and out ad scheme

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 4:09 PM - 0 Comments

3:24:55 PM
Signs That Are Not All That Promising: You walk into committee, and the first thing you hear is one clerk telling another that he’s hoping he won’t have to stay all night and the other clerk replies by telling him, brightly, that there’s a roster.

Oh, good. Is there someone there who can spell off an exhausted liveblogger?

Yeah, so apparently, the rumours are true: there’s a fairly good chance that this afternoon’s meeting of the Ethics committee could turn into an evening meeting, then a midnight meeting—hell, maybe even a breakfast meeting. It all depends on whether the Conservatives launch a last ditch attempt to filibuster the vote on a motion to investigate the Conservative in and out advertising scandal, which is hauntingly similar, in substance, to that fateful motion that brought Procedure and House Affairs to an ignomious end. There’s a key difference this time around, though.

Unlike Proc, which was chaired by the ever-obliging Gary Goodyear, who was always willing to call a five minute break to allow a filibustering colleague to slip off to the men’s room, this committee is run by Paul Szabo, and he’s prepared to make them sit all night if that’s what it takes — and it very well might.

3:36:01 PM
If you’re wondering why the meeting hasn’t started yet, it’s because of a vote—the members are only just starting to trickle into the room and the chair hasn’t made his entrance yet. If he’s carrying supplies for a sit-in, we’ll know this could be a long night.

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Here comes the vote! Maybe—Liveblogging the in-and-out motion at Ethics

By kadyomalley - Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 4:47 PM - 0 Comments

4:32:05 PM
Well, I’m back—after a thoroughly refreshing Red Bull-and-sunshine break—and the privacy reform portion of the meeting is still going on. Mike Wallace is quizzing the Corrections Canada officials about what kind of information is contained in an inmate’s file, and seems to be enjoying it immensely. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so inspired, actually.

4:35:40 PM
Yikes. I just noticed that Maurice Vellacott is here, and he’s sitting directly beside Russ Hiebert AKA The Ghost of Maurice Vellacotts Past. Somewhere, a goose just walked over my grave.

The witnesses are starting to look increasingly frantic. I suspect they were hoping to get out of here after an hour as well.

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We join this committee just before the good stuff

By kadyomalley - Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 4:24 PM - 0 Comments

3:26:52 PM
So I’ll warn you right now that this might be a very interrupted livebloggening: I’m at Ethics, eagerly awaiting the debate on Charles Hubbard’s motion to investigate the Conservative in-and-out campaign spending scheme—but that’s not scheduled to get underway until after the committee hears from two witnesses from Corrections Canada, who are here to talk about privacy reform.

3:30:22 PM
Okay, my fear that David Tilson would hijack the meeting with a Point of Petulance appears to have been unfounded. He’s not even here, which means that the first round of testimony can go ahead as scheduled, which means I’m going to sneak out for a half hour or so, and come back for the second hour.

I should point out that the members of the Ethics committee have been all over the ongoing opposition day debate over changing the Code of Conduct—I think every one of the permanent members has gotten up in the House today to speak to the motion; opposition members in favour, and David Tilson against it.

Amazingly, at one point he suggested that the matter should go to committee, rather than be decided by the House of Commons. This, after he and his party attempted to scuttle the committee’s attempt to do just that.

3:39:26 PM
Sunshine break. I’ll be back in time for the fun!

In and—not out? Liveblogging the Ethics Committee

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 3:58 PM - 0 Comments

3:25:42 PM
Man, I hope I didn’t give away any surprises. I got to Ethics a few minutes early, and I asked the clerk whether the chair will deal with the in-and-out motion before or after the privacy reform witnesses. When she told me it was first on the agenda, Russ Hiebert—who had been dormousing to that point—jerked to attention. “The Hubbard motion?” He asked. Yes, that’s the one. My day is full of Charles Hubbard today.

Anyway, when the clerk nodded, he leapt from his seat and strode purposefully out of the room, and he’s not been seen since. Of course, that was only a few minutes ago, and the meeting hasn’t even begun—and there he is now. Rubbing his hands together with something other than glee, even.

It’s amazing how much goes on before the gavel hits the wood.

Mike Wallace just turned up, rolling suitcase in tow. Cranky is already here—and yes, darned right he looks cranky—and Dave Van Kesteren, whose name I have a horrible habit of misspelling. Dave Batters and Russ, of course, round out the Conservative side.

As for opposition members, we have Charles Hubbard and Brian Murphy for the Liberals, Richard Nadeau and Carole Lavallee for the BQ, and a vacant chair where Pat Martin should be, but I’m sure he’ll show up eventually.

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Right back where we started from: Liveblogging the Ethics Committee

By kadyomalley - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 4:15 PM - 0 Comments

3:29:16 PM
And I’m back where it all started—the Ethics committee, that is, my first regular liveblogging gig, during those heady days of the Mulroney/Schreiber hearings, which, as it happens, is at the heart of why we’re here today.

The NDP’s Pat Martin has a motion to recall the former Prime Minister to the stand, to give him the opportunity to respond to subsequent testimony, and to allow the committee to “flesh out” the story with a few pointed supplementary questions.

3:37:07 PM
Martin admits that he was the lone opposition hold-out when the rest of the parties—well, except for the government, of course—wanted to subpoena Mulroney back in January. At the time, he says, he believed that the current Prime Minister was prepared to establish the promised public inquiry, but since then, there has been no action, and as a result, his faith has been shaken.

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The scourge of Strategic Lawsuits Against Parliamentary Participation: Liveblogging the Ethics Committee

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 4:10 PM - 0 Comments

3:31:20 PM
So I have a confession to make: I was actually going to skip Ethics this afternoon, since my thumbs are still recovering from this morning’s double header, but when I found out Pat Martin was planning on moving his motion to amend the Code of Conduct to make a defamation lawsuit not count as a conflict of interest for a sitting MP—as would be the case under the Thibault ruling—I just had to trundle over to West Block to watch. So here I am, and here is Pat Martin, and here we go.

3:33:56 PM
Alright, the motion has officially been tabled, and now Paul Szabo has the floor. He, apparently, has a ruling to make, and it involves the Procedure and House Affairs committee, and how amending the Code of Conduct—which is what Martin proposes to do—technically falls under its aegis. He points out that the committee is “master of its own work order and agenda” (usually more poetically termed “destiny”), and he rules it out of order.

3:37:22 PM
Right on cue, Martin challenges the ruling of the chair—very politely, almost as though it was arranged—and with that, the Conservatives vote in favour of the ruling, the opposition votes against it, and presto, the motion is now in order. That was easy. Now, for the tricky part.

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The pause that refreshes in the corridors of power

By kadyomalley - Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 6:39 PM - 0 Comments

Oh, Carole Lavallée. During the Mulroney/Schreiber hearings, you became known to ITQ readers as the Voice of Sanity – now, here you are, successfully moving an entirely sensible motion condemning the Conservative decision to kill off the ATI request database. Really, what would the Ethics committee – or the rest of us, for that matter – do without you? I don’t suppose you’d be willing to reconsider that whole separatism thing, would you?

Carole Lavallée moved, — That Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the parliamentary Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics report to the House as its 6th report that it:

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