The Hypocrisy of Secret Meetings and Opposition Politics

In a comment to a Don Martin column in the National Post,  frege99 wrote,  “MPs on a committee can be sworn to secrecy if necessary to protect information the committee determines should not be released. There is no reason to believe that MPs sitting in opposition are less willing to act in the national interest than are those in government.”

Similarly, the G&M reported that the  “…opposition is not asking for a full public release of the documents, but rather for the government to let a parliamentary committee study them in private.”

They're kidding, right?

In a perfect world, swearing members of parliament (MPs) to secrecy and then revealing documents would be a no brainer.

However, the plan derails at the point where you actually need to swear highly partisan MPs to secrecy. Why would the Opposition want their members muzzled when there are political games to be played and voters to be wooed by making damaging documents public?

It's foolish to think, and for the Opposition to suggest, that MPs would agree to secrecy when they desperately want the information contained in the documents to be made public. The more damaging the revelations are to the government, the more valuable they are to the Opposition and more likely they will be released.

More importantly, at least from the Opposition's perspective, the detainee abuse issue has become intolerable because of excess secrecy and it is ludicrous to think it might be solved by more of the same. In fact, it's disingenuous for Opposition to even suggest it.

The undeclared and unexamined assumption is that the Opposition is acting out of some altruistic national interest. They aren't. Full Stop.

The government would never agree to this for similar reasons. There is an adage in the security business that if you have one lock and one key, you have security, but if you have one lock and two keys, you have chaos.

Having MPs pinky-swear to never reveal what goes on in a meeting regarding politically sensitive documents is a sure-fire way to ensure that the content of those documents and/or the documents themselves become public. The government is having a hard enough time managing its own bureaucracy on this issue, it doesn't need the added headache of politically motivated MPs running around with state secrets.

According to the  Toronto Star,

    ...(p)olitical scientist Ned Franks, a parliamentary procedure expert, said the government is right to be concerned about releasing sensitive information to MPs, even if they promise to keep it secret.

    “The House of Commons at present is so virulently partisan that I think the pressures on the members of a committee like that would be immense to reveal the naughty bits,” Franks said in an interview.

    "Parliament’s a leaky sieve and I don’t trust its ability to hold confidences.”

There is zero incentive here for either the government or the Opposition to create an ad hoc intelligence committee to review files on the detainee issue. That said, it's obvious that the Tories thought long and hard (an oxymoron I know) about this issue during prorogation, and came up with a alternative involving former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobbuci.. This is a reasonable alternative. Although it falls far short of a public inquiry, it's better than nothing at all. (A reasonable alternative provided the Conservatives follow through, which they haven't).