Vikileaks Watch: Pack your bags, Adam Carroll, you're going to (the wrong) committee!

It was under those statutes -- ATI and CoIA, specfiically, that ministerial staffers Sebastien Tognieri and Kaz Nejatian were called to testify on their activities as ministerial staffers by the previous iteration of ETHI. Employees of party research bureaus, like MPs' staff,  are not covered by that particular law, which is why issues related to the conduct of non-ministerial Hill staff -- including the alleged use of House of Commons resources -- fall under the aegis of Procedure and House Affairs.
 
For that reason, the Del Mastro motion will almost certainly be ruled out of order by the chair, a decision that the government side will, with equal near certainty, use its majority to overturn, whereupon the requested meeting will go forward, despite the fact that it will be doing so in the wrong parliamentary venue.

That is, after all, exactly what happened back in 2010, when the then still minority Conservatives at Government Operations decided to get a bit of their collective own back for the opposition-backed investigation into alleged illegal lobbying by former MP Rahim Jaffer.

With the support of the NDP, they successfully forced that same committee to look into allegedly extra-parliamentary business activities on the part of sitting Liberal MP Derek Lee, based on his partnership with Toronto law firm Sun Partners, despite the best efforts of the committee chair to explain that, as the allegations dealt with the conduct of a current MP, it should be put before Procedure and House Affairs. (For some reason, the Conservatives seemed very keen to do it at the very same committee that had investigated the Jaffer Affair, perhaps as an act of parliamentary karmic payback, despite the fact that the appropriate committee could be found just one floor down.)

Although it fell on seemingly deaf ears at the time, the chair's argument ultimately found favour with the speaker, who subsequently ordered the committee report on the matter officially withdrawn, as it had gone beyond the mandate of the committee, and, as such, had been improperly placed before the House. It  bears noting that the same fate would likely befall any report emanating from the study into the Vikileaks controversy, but given that the motion makes no reference to returning to the House with its conclusions, if any, the matter will likely come to a close after Carroll's testimony.

In any case, it remains frustratingly unclear just what the government -- or, at least, some of its more bombastic members -- has against poor Procedure and House Affairs. It's every bit as important and masterful of its own destiny as Ethics, and it's chaired by a Conservative, even: the always congenial Joe Preston. Sure, its usual meeting room is in the bowels of Centre Block, far from the bright lights of the prestigious Railway or Reading Rooms, but with proper notice, it wouldn't be difficult to take over one of the big rooms for the day, thus allowing the cameras to capture the moment for the ages.

Really, all things considered, it would be just as easy -- and, it should go without saying, infinitely more respectful of the Standing Orders -- to bring the motion to the right committee in the first place, rather than simply bulldoze over the objections of the chair at the wrong one. At this point, one is forced to entertain the unsettling possibility that there is something else going on here.