Tories argue opposition is misleading Commons, Oda NOT

The rusty wheels of Parliament’s internal disciplinary system have been set in motion, a process designed to determine whether embattled minister Bev Oda offended the dignity of the House of Commons.

At issue is whether the international co-operation minister misled the Commons over how funding for aid organization Kairos was ultimately blocked.

“Mr. Speaker, I and my colleagues are calling upon you to put a stop to tampered documents, to blaming others, to casual regard for facts before a committee of the House,” Liberal MP John McKay said in the House.

“We call on you to uphold the highest standards of discourse by ministers in their communication to the House.”

NDP, Liberal and Bloc Quebecois members of the Commons foreign affairs committee agreed in a report to the House that Oda appeared to be in breach of privilege.

If Milliken agrees that it appears she breached parliamentary privilege, it will again fall to MPs in the deeply polarized Commons to decide whether her statements and actions put her in contempt of Parliament — a little-used label in Canadian parliamentary tradition.

The Conservatives delayed Milliken’s analysis of the matter by saying they needed more time respond to the motion brought by McKay and New Democrat MP Paul Dewar.

The Conservatives responded to the Commons report by suggesting it was the opposition, not Oda, who were in breach of parliamentary privilege.

“It must and does follow that the minister’s answer did not in any way mislead this committee or the House of Commons,” the Tory MPs on the foreign affairs committee wrote in a supplementary report.

“In fact it is the opposition that has attempted to mislead this committee and the House both by mischaracterizing the minister’s communication of her own decision in a way that suggests a breach of privilege.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper also repeated that Oda’s decision was always made clear.

“Minister Oda has been very clear that the decision was hers, and it should be hers,” Harper said in Toronto.

“You should know, we’re very clear with our ministers. We were elected to ensure that when we give out taxpayers’ money, that taxpayers’ money is used for purposes that will further the objectives of policy.”

The minister’s communication of her decision is key to the controversy.

After it was revealed last year that Kairos had been turned down for $7 million in funding for its aid projects, the opposition began pressing the government for answers. MPs were told it was the Canadian International Development Agency — not Oda herself — that turned down Kairos.

“CIDA thoroughly analysed Kairos’s program proposal and determined, with regret, that it did not meet the agency’s current priorities,” Oda’s parliamentary secretary Jim Abbott said last March, a statement for which he later apologized to the Commons.

“The CIDA decision not to continue funding Kairos was based on the overall assessment of the proposal, not on any single criterion,” Oda informed the Commons last April.

But when senior CIDA bureaucrats were pressed on the issue by the foreign affairs committee last December, it was revealed that Kairos actually did meet their criteria for funding and had originally been recommended for funding.

Oda told the committee she did not know who wrote the word “not” on the recommendation to fund Kairos, but that it reflected her decision and that of her government.

Fast-forward to this week, and Oda apologized to the Commons if her language had led anyone to conclude that she and the department “were of one mind” on funding Kairos, and that it was at her direction the word “not” had been written on the document.

Her Conservative colleagues on the foreign affairs committee sought to further clarify her statements.

“The minister did not know who in her office had actually written the word on the document, as accurately reflected in her answer ‘I do not know’.”

They also underline that once the minister had taken a decision, that became the department’s decision and that is how it was referred to afterward.

Oda did not answer questions about Kairos again during question period, instead allowing House Leader John Baird to come to her defence, but did rise to respond to a query about assistance for Haiti.

“They won’t let her get up and answer questions honestly. They answer for her. They’ve clearly lost confidence in her capacity to explain what’s going on,” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said later.

“I mean the situation has just got completely ridiculous and it’s an abuse of Parliament. She should stand up in the House and explain to Canadians what the heck is going on.”