OTTAWA - The ruling Conservatives have been rebuked -- but not punished -- by the Speaker of the House of Commons for conducting a "reprehensible" phone campaign against Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.
Speaker Andrew Scheer said Tuesday he is "entirely sympathetic" to Cotler's grievance but "on technical grounds" has no power to do anything about it.
Cotler had asked Scheer to rule that his parliamentary privileges had been violated by a Conservative-sponsored telephone poll in his Mount Royal riding, in which constituents were falsely led to believe Cotler had or was about to resign.
He was bitterly disappointed by Scheer's ruling, which appeared to be based strictly on the Speaker's determination that the false and misleading phone campaign did not impede Cotler's ability to fulfil his duties as an MP.
Cotler said Scheer ignored his argument that the ploy sowed confusion in the minds of his constituents, damaged the integrity of Parliament and fuelled cynicism about politics. Still, he took solace in the fact that the Tory ploy has been roundly condemned in the court of public opinion, including by Scheer, a Conservative MP.
"I have an abiding trust in the good sense of the Canadian people ... I'm hoping the Conservatives will respect the court of public opinion, will respect nonetheless the privileges of the House and regard this as having been only a technical ruling but on the merits it remains reprehensible," Cotler told reporters.
"I hope that they will cease and desist from it and that we'll not see the likes of these practices again."
Scheer expressed a similar hope, saying he's sure "all reasonable people would agree that attempting to sow confusion in the minds of voters as to whether or not their member is about to resign is a reprehensible tactic and that the honourable member for Mount Royal has a legitimate grievance."
He said he hopes the case will compel political operatives to be "more careful in the information they disseminate" to voters in future and cause voters to be "more wary and judge more critically any information presented to them by unsolicited callers."
The Conservatives did not immediately respond to Scheer's ruling. But they have maintained all along that there was nothing wrong with the tactic. They say rumours have been swirling for years that Cotler may resign and they were simply trying to identify their vote in the riding in case there's a byelection.
They had urged Scheer not to get involved in what they argued was a purely partisan matter. And they'd contended that any attempt to curtail such activity would constitute an undue limitation on freedom of speech.
Shortly before Scheer's ruling, interim Liberal leader Bob Rae lumped the ploy against Cotler in with the Tories' penchant for limiting debate in the Commons and other alleged sins to make the case that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is abusing power and stifling democracy.
"A government that treats Parliament this way is a government that ultimately will treat its citizens this way," Rae told a news conference.
"A government that does not even condemn the deliberate falsification of information being given to people in telephone calls directed into a riding, a government that is not even capable of understanding how wrong that is ... this is a government that abuses power on a regular basis, like everyone else eats breakfast, that's what these guys do. There's something wrong with that."
The Liberals produced statistics to bolster their claim that Harper's Conservative government has invoked closure or time allocation to limit debate on bills in an unprecedented manner.
In the first 66 sitting days of Harper's majority, they said debate has been cut off nine times, on average after less than four hours of debate. By comparison, the last Liberal majority government from 2001-04 limited debate 10 times in 419 sitting days, on average after eight hours.
"At every turn, Stephen Harper is trying to stifle democracy. The numbers don't lie," said Liberal House leader Marc Garneau.
The Tories have had Cotler's riding in their sights for some time. They were reprimanded by the previous Speaker, Peter Milliken, during the last Parliament for papering Mount Royal with taxpayer-funded leaflets suggesting Cotler, a prominent human rights activist, was anti-Semetic.
Tory candidate Saulie Zajdel came within 2,500 votes of defeating Cotler in last spring's election. He is now working as a special adviser to Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore in Montreal, a taxpayer-funded job Liberals suspect is aimed at boosting Zajdel's profile and making it appear as though he is the de facto MP for Mount Royal.
