Obtaining a majority government and immediately moving four parliamentary committees into secret sessions while adjourning the proceedings of a fifth suggests the new Mark Carney government is not any different from the old Justin Trudeau government.
Both have made a mockery of Trudeau's promise from the 2015 election, which brought the Liberals to power to give 'greater independence to parliamentary committees,' with a commitment to openness and transparency.
Broken Promises
The Liberals in power promptly abandoned that commitment after winning a majority government, and even after they were reduced to a minority from 2019 to 2025, used procedural tricks from filibustering to proroguing Parliament to impede parliamentary committees when they were probing government waste or political corruption.
There will be less of that, and perhaps none of it, now that the Carney government has a majority and therefore controls the majority of votes on the committees. That said, even the Carney Liberals apparently sensed that it had gone too far when, after obtaining their majority government through floor crossings rather than winning it in a general election, they promptly moved the ethics, health, science and transport committees into secret sessions.
That prevented opposition MPs from publicly discussing what transpired during the meetings as well as banning the media from reporting what went on behind closed doors.
Coordinated Action
At a fifth committee, veterans affairs, the Liberals adjourned prematurely, cutting off a Conservative motion to study the effects of last year's budget on vets. While this appeared to be a coordinated action by Liberal MPs in multiple committees acting like trained seals on marching orders from above, it is hard to know what the purpose was, other than a show of arrogance.
Perhaps sensing they had stepped on a rake, Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon entered the fray on Friday claiming that, despite the shenanigans, the Liberals remain committed to open committee meetings. That is, as long as the Conservatives do not come to them with the sole purpose of obstructing the proceedings.
That, of course, ignored the fact it is exactly what the Liberals used to do when they were a minority government and did not want the majority of opposition MPs on committees passing motions the Liberals did not want approved.
We await the Liberals' renewed commitment to transparency with a huge grain of salt.
