Inside Politics

InformalMeetingWatch: Not all All-Party Parliamentary Committees are created equal ...

by Kady O'Malley Posted: February 8, 2010 9:57 AM Last Updated: February 8, 2010 11:45 AM
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(Adrian Wild/Canadian Press)

... at least, not if you consider the apparent willingness of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to appear before the Canadian Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism this morning to be a not so tacit acknowledgement by the government of the legitimacy of that particular parallel parliamentary process. 

If it is, it would make this a markedly different attitude towards the CPIA -- which includes members from all parties, but is not an official House of Commons committee, which means prorogation had no effect on its existence -- than we saw demonstrated in response to last week's opposition-organized "all-party committee" meetings last week, which heard from witnesses on the looming parliamentary standoff over the order to produce unredacted documents on the transfer of Afghan detainees, as well as the United Nations no-fly list. 

Although the current Conservative members of the Afghanistan and Foreign Affairs committees were invited to attend, they boycotted both hearings, and the once-and-future chair of the eventually to be reconstituted Afghanistan committee issued a press release denouncing the entire exercise as a "transparently partisan event," despite the fact that the only party that wasn't willing to take part was his own. If it had, it would have been just as nonpartisan -- or, in this case, pan-partisan -- as today's Antisemitism Inquiry. 

Nevertheless, later this morning Kenney will join representatives from various law enforcement agencies, as well as Federal Victims of Crime Ombudsman Steve Sullivan, to discuss how they monitor antisemitic incidents, as well as "what data they have, what indicators they use for hate crimes in general and antisemitism in particular, and what recommendations they propose." Does this bode well for a second round of "informal" committee meetings, perhaps during the week between the end of the Olympics and the start of the new session? Stay tuned!  


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