Althia Raj, Ottawa (Toronto Star) – A new feud is brewing in the Senate after Liberal senators said they plan to release a controversial committee report on the RCMP while Parliament is shut down — a move the Tories say is “unprecedented, dangerous and offensive.”
Sen. Colin Kenny, long-time chair of the Senate’s national security and defence committee, said the Liberals will release the report’s content but won’t describe it as an official committee report.
Committees are dissolved when Parliament is prorogued.
“I guarantee they (the Conservative senators) will not go forward with this report. The only way it will go public is if the Liberals make it public,” Kenny said.
Conservative Sen. Pamela Wallin said the Liberals have no right to do this and accused Kenny of using his position as a “bully pulpit” to spread his “own bias.”
“No one behaves this way,” Wallin said. “These are observations that don’t belong to him … (Kenny) is not chair of the committee and the report is no longer his.”
Liberal Sen. Grant Mitchell said he “fundamentally disagrees” with Wallin.
Kenny has been an “outstanding good chair” who has huge respect within the military, defence and policing communities, Mitchell said.
Anyone can use the information the committee has collected — the transcripts on the Internet — to issue whatever reports they want, he said.
“It is public information that we have every right to use,” Mitchell said.
Conservative senators expressed discomfort with the critical “tenor and tone” of the draft report.
They also questioned the need to issue recommendations, such as one calling for 5,000 new RCMP members to be added in the next seven years, a move the Tories say could cost the government “half a billion dollars.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will soon appoint five new senators, giving the Tories control of Senate and its defence committee.
A Conservative is expected to replace Kenny as chair.
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