Whipped into a frenzy of confusion

In minority Parliaments, it's very, very important for party whips -- the senior MP placed in charge of organizing each party's voting -- to be very clear about what each team is doing on what vote and what the strategy is in every case.

We've seen a lot of close votes in the House over the last few weeks, which only serves to underline how important it is for each party's whips to be very clear in their messaging to caucus, and know what their head count is going into each important vote. Each party leader counts on the whip's office to get this done.

Last night's mess was an important vote for the Liberals -- not because the government could fall, but because it was their motion, and arguably, that motion was written for strategic partisan purposes.

Given the above, I am at a loss to reconcile two things in the cold light of day this morning.

The first:

Because different officials and MPs were telling different CBC reporters and producers different things last night, CBC News re-contacted the opposition whip's office directly this morning with a simple question for Rodger Cuzner and his team:

Was yesterday's vote (on the opposition motion on maternal health) a whipped vote? (meaning: all Liberal MPs were expected to turn out and vote with their party's line)

The answer: Yes. All opposition motions are whipped, they insist.

The second:

Derek Lee is a Liberal MP known to have had pro-life sympathies in the past. He'd be on anyone's short list of MPs to watch in terms of Liberal dissention on the motion -- and going on his past track record, he's independent enough to risk personal sanctions when something is important to him, so whipped vote or not, he was one to watch.

When the votes were counted yesterday, Lee was not in the House of Commons, arguably assisting in the motion's defeat.

Yesterday after Question Period -- mere hours before the vote, when the Liberal caucus' message and the stakes should have been clear -- a few reporters caught up with him in the hallway and this exchange is on tape. I've reviewed it and I've transcribed it here:

Lee: I'm not so sure this is a whipped vote - (reporters start to interject) I don't think this is intended to be a whipped vote, everybody should relax a little bit and I hope everyone can subscribe to the intent of the opposition motion which was to try to push the government to flesh out what they mean with respect to the funding of the proposed new initiatives...

[reporters try to push him about possible dissenters: "so you, mr. mckay, mr. szabo, mr. mcteague...]

Lee: No, no names... a lot of members are having discussions about this, chatting for sure, the issue's come up, we'll talk about it... but um...

[reporter interjects: I guess an option is to just not show up?]

Lee: Yeah, that's one of the options for some members and it will all work out. When the vote's over everyone will go back to dealing with some of the other important issues of the day.

Either it was whipped, or MPs were free to vote their conscience without threat of sanction. I don't understand how these things happily and comfortably co-exist.

Bottom line:

Was this an isolated screw-up, or the sign of a bigger problem in the opposition leader's office? I have no solid conclusion as yet, especially because a motion like this brings up deeply personal priorities that don't come into play in other policy debates.

But I do know that we would never see this kind of confusion and contradiction on the government benches in this Parliament, which is why the government could rightfully claim to be the winners, at least on strategy, last night.

The bigger policy debate on the maternal health iniatives will continue. But the Liberals now have an embarassing own-goal on the scoreboard, and are playing from behind.