Another Point of Privilege

Joe Comartin is known as a nice guy who knows his stuff. His peers have twice named him Canada's most knowledgeable MP. He's calm too, rarely gets steamed. But these days the NDP MP is on a mission, and, like a growing number of opposition MPs, it comes down to a question of privilege.

It all goes back to Nov. 4, when the head of Correctional Service of Canada appeared before the justice committee. Don Head promised to provide a bunch of information MPs had asked for during his testimony. He said he'd do it before Bill C-36, which would repeal the faint hope clause for killers sentenced to life in prison, was examined clause-by-clause.
 
It appears Head met the deadline, but he sent his statistics and information about recidivism, and who attends faint hope hearings, to the office of Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan.  MPs didn't get the information in time for the clause-by-clause study of the bill. Comartin notified the chair of the justice committee he would make a formal complaint. That seemed to work, sort of.   
 
On the afternoon of Monday, Nov. 23, Comartin received some documents. Comartin says Tom Lukiwski, the Conservative deputy house leader, approached him in the House of Commons and gave him some undated paperwork from Head.  But no one else on the committee received the information. That came at around noon on Nov. 25 - a day after debate on the bill and after the vote in the House of Commons. 

The package sent to committee members on the 25th showed Head had sent the information to Van Loan on Nov. 13.

Comartin was not amused: "We were making a major public policy shift in how we handle people convicted of murdered and sentenced to life in prison." 

He said he believes the minister's office either ignored the information, thinking it was just something the committee has asked for, which, Comartin said, would show "a gross disrespect for the committee process." Or, Comartin figures, it was "an intentional interference in the committee's work."

This isn't the first time a report has been held up in Van Loan's office. A few weeks ago I reported here that Van Loan was holding on to the RCMP's annual report on the gun registry.  It was tabled two days after a vote to kill the long-gun portion of the registry. 

UPDATE:  (posted on Wednesday, December 2)