Opposition parties cry foul over Liberal move to seize control of committees

Conservatives say the Liberals are trying to “stack the deck” by moving to seize control of House committees, and are proposing to leave three oversight committees intact.

Government House leader Steven MacKinnon said in a social media post on Tuesday that he intends to introduce a motion “in the coming days” that would add more Liberals to House committees after the party gained a majority earlier this month.

Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer blasted the Liberals’ move on Wednesday, accusing the government of attempting to “stack the deck” in its own favour.

“Rather than use their new-found majority to make life more affordable for Canadians, the very first thing this Liberal government has done is to make life easier for themselves,” Scheer told reporters on Parliament Hill.

The Conservative House leader said his party would introduce an amendment to MacKinnon’s motion that would leave the standings on three oversight committees — the ethics committee, the public accounts committee and the government operations committee — intact.

“Any excuse they might have about a legislative agenda doesn’t apply to oversight committees. These are important committees where the opposition does the work on behalf of Canadian tax payers and voters to shine a light, to go through line-by-line spending, to find out who got contracts and how decisions were made,” Scheer said.

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In an emailed statement, MacKinnon said the Liberals wouldn’t support the Conservatives’ proposal.

“There are not two tiers of committees in Parliament. They are all the same. And the principle applies to them equally,” the statement said.

The composition of committees traditionally reflects the parties’ standings in the House of Commons. All legislation passed in Parliament must be studied at committee, and MPs can launch separate studies into topics of interest.

The House unanimously passed a motion in June which locked in committee standings for the duration of this Parliament.

As it stands, House committees have a roughly even split of Liberals and Conservatives. Each committee also has one Bloc Québécois member.

MacKinnon defended his motion, saying it’s a “long-standing principle” that a party that has a majority of seats in the House also has a majority on committees.

“From the start, we’ve made it very clear we want to work collaboratively with parties in the House. We don’t want to play silly partisan games that wastes the time and the money of taxpayers,” MacKinnon said earlier Wednesday.

WATCH | Liberals changing House committees in favour of ‘partisan interests,’ Blanchet says:

Liberals changing the rules on House committees in favour of ‘partisan interests,’ Blanchet says

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said the Liberal government’s move to change the standing orders — the rules that govern the House of Commons — to secure the most votes on Parliamentary committees is ‘something quite revealing to do’ after gaining a majority.

Despite MacKinnon’s assertion, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said Wednesday that the Liberals are trying to take control of committees to serve their own “partisan interests.”

“The government has not been elected as a majority government. [Prime Minister Mark Carney] has convinced some MPs to cross the floor and become suddenly deeply convicted Liberals,” Blanchet told reporters on Parliament Hill.

“To change those [parliamentary] rules in favour of their own partisan interests is something quite revealing to do as the first thing to be done [after gaining a majority].”

The Liberals formed a minority government after last year’s election, but moved into majority territory earlier this month after regaining seats in three byelections and attracting a slew of floor-crossers in recent months.

The three Liberals who won byelections earlier this month have yet to be sworn in and MacKinnon said Wednesday he is not “100 per cent” certain when they will claim their seats.

The process between someone winning an election and being sworn in can take a few weeks.