"B-b-but THE LIBRULLSS!!!!"

Here's how pathetic the harpercons' arguments are: While this was admittedly in response to a Liberal blogger's claim that no Liberal has even been suspected of being in contempt of Parliament, "Anonymous" spoke up.

In 2002 the Speaker suggested that the issue of whether Lib Defence Minister Art Eggleton lied to the H of C regarding Afghan detainees - in other words he was accused of breaching the privileges of MPs, a la Bev Oda. I can't link to it 'cos I'm on a mobile device but you can check out Hansard on-line for Feb 1, 2002.

Eggleton wasn't found in contempt b/c at that time the Libs had a majority government and had the votes to ensure no breach of privilege/contempt motion could succeed. Which is my problem w/ the recent claims of contempt. This was hardly an impartial jury making a finding of contempt; this was just everyone voting along party lines.

I have a vague recollection of that actually. You can search through this blog to see the low opinion I have for the Liberal Party of Canada, its ethics, its Afghanistan policy, its imperialism in Haiti. I despise the Liberal Party of Canada.

But now the harpercons, the party of "transparency" and "accountability" defending lying to Parliament and hiding their policies' spending estimates from Parliament with a witless, "B-b-but the Liberals did it too!!"

Not only is that pathetic, it's also evidence of their unfitness for government. If the Liberals pulled shit like that and got away with it with a majority in Parliament, the harpercons show that they're stupid, incompetent hacks to believe that they can get away with the same garbage when they don't have the votes.

Here harpercon stooges (and everybody else), this is why the Bev Oda scandal and the withholding documents scandal are important.

Altering documents and then lying about it would allow a government to forge department recommendations out of whole cloth. They could simply type the names and forge the signatures of department staff recommending any course of action the government wants, and then if the policies turn out badly, the government turns to their forged documents and say that they were following the expert advice of their bureaucrats. The bureaucrats would obviously scream blue murder, but the government ministers would just keep lying and it would be their word against the staffers'.

Is that the sort of government we want?

Withholding basic information about policies to Parliament is withholding from the people's representatives the expert advice paid for with the people's money. A government that kept expert advice and projections to itself could ram anything through Parliament while the opposition parties struggled to educate themselves on these subjects in order to try to provide criticisms or alternatives to the detailed, specific ones being advocated by the government. "Debate" under such conditions would be farcical at best.

Finally, ... here's something that would stir a harpercon's vital fluids: Imagine if an NDP government signed a security treaty with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez! Imagine if it all was negotiated in secret and only the minimum of details were provided for the "debate" in Parliament!

Do unto others, harpercons, as you would have done unto you.