Part 1 - Unprecedented or not? Memories of committee meltdowns past

Amid the overall political surreality surrounding the meeting that the Afghanistan committee found itself not holding earlier this week, there was much head-scratching amongst journalists and staffers alike as we tried to figure out whether it was, indeed, unprecedented for a governing party to successfully shut down proceedings simply by not showing up. After all, it wasn't as though this was the first time that the Conservatives had managed to stonewall an overly inquisitive or otherwise troublesome committee. Back in 2008, the Speaker very nearly declared a state of parliamentary emergency after no fewer than four committees either had ground, or were in the process of grinding, to a halt -- not, mind you, as a result of government-backed boycotts, but government-backed filibusters. 

The first one to collapse  was Procedure and House Affairs. where a motion to investigate the Conservative Party's in-and-out electoral financing scheme led to meeting after meeting after meeting of government members running down the clock to prevent the vote from being called. Eventually, the opposition parties got fed up and ousted the chair -- at the time, one Gary Goodyear, since ascended to the ranks of junior cabinet minister -- which really did not go over well at all, particularly for Joe Preston, who was elected to take Goodyear's place, despite his vehement protestations. After accusing the opposition of forcing him into indentured servitude, which made for a truly touching acceptance speech, Preston reluctantly took the chair, and adjourned the meeting, which turned out to be the last one the committee would hold until well into the next year.

The next to go was Justice, where the chair -- the now-retired Art Hanger -- decided to employ a different strategy when faced with a vote he didn't want to call on a motion that would launch an investigation into the Cadman Affair: He flat-out refused to do so, and would vacate the chair to prove it. Camera crews began to show up at Justice meetings just to capture the moment when he would throw down the gavel and march out the door; the opposition members, meanwhile, weren't willing to have one of their vice-chairs take over, since that would give the government a majority, and ensure the motion's defeat. That awkward stalemate lasted for several weeks -- with more and more media attention at each successive flounce -- until finally, the chair just stopped calling meetings. 

Then there was Environment, which spent much of the first part of the year hamstrung by a filibuster over an NDP private members' bill, which, if memory serves, was the original iteration of the now legendary Climate Change Accountability Act.  Eventually, the opposition members were able to force a vote on the bill -- I forget the details, but I know there were plans for a marathon sitting to hear out the government speakers once and for all -- but it contributed to Conservative grumbling over the tyranny of the majority, which, as it turned out, was ostensibly the impetus for the prime minister's decision to override his own fixed election date legislation to drop the writ later that year.

Finally, there was the Ethics committee, which wound up dealing with the in and out motion after the demise of Procedure and House Affairs, but eventually managed to pass it, thanks to what has become known since that muggy June afternoon as the Szabo Maneuver: After giving Conservative members what he saw as sufficient time to put forward their respective arguments against the notion of conducting an inquiry into their party's campaign financing system, the chair went ahead and called the vote. Yeah, it turns out you can do that. Who knew? Other than Paul Szabo, that is.

But why, then, would the government have gone to the trouble of filibustering through so many meetings if they could have simply told their members not to show up?