Justin Trudeau accuses Stephen Harper of turning parliament into a ‘partisan swamp’
Liberal leader accuses Harper of leading ‘the most secretive, divisive’ government, and promises to make information more accessible to Canadians, and to create a committee to make recommendations for Senate appointments.

thestar.com
Aug. 11, 2015
By Allan Woods

On the eve of the resumption of suspended Sen. Mike Duffy’s fraud trial, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau accused the Conservative party of having turned Ottawa into a “partisan swamp” that needs to be reformed urgently.

At a campaign event at his riding office in Montreal, Trudeau said that if elected he would put in place new measures to change the Senate-appointment process, make information more accessible to Canadians and give members of Parliament more power to represent the wishes of their constituents.

Under Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, the flow of information has dried up, elected MPs have become mere votes to be counted and the upper chamber has been set alight by an expenses-and-ethics scandal, Trudeau said.

The scandal is expected to take centre stage in the campaign starting Wednesday, when Harper’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, begins testifying at Duffy’s fraud trial in Ottawa about a personal cheque for $90,000 he provided to the senator and former journalist to pay back improper and allegedly illegal expense claims.

“Harper turned Ottawa into a partisan swamp,” Trudeau said.

“He has led the most secretive, divisive and hyper-partisan government in Canada’s history.”

The Liberal party’s three-point plan was among a series of propositions first made public in June that included overhauling the country’s voting system to implement proportional representation to replace the first-past-the-post system that has guided Canada since its founding.

On Tuesday, Trudeau dismissed pledges by Harper to stop appointing senators and NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair’s promise to abolish the upper chamber, which he said was a dangerous promise given that it would involve a new round of constitutional talks that could inflame the hobbled sovereignty movement.

Instead, he said, the Liberals would farm out the job of selecting senators to an independent, non-partisan advisory committee that would make recommendations to the prime minister.

The New Democrats argue that even changes to the process of appointing senators would require changes to the Constitution, citing a 2014 Supreme Court ruling on proposed Senate elections that said any changes to the method of selecting Senators would require a formal amendment to the Constitution.

The Tories, meanwhile, defended Harper’s moratorium on appointments as the only Constitution-free method of dealing with the problems.

“The prime minister has been clear - we will not do anything to further entrench an unelected, unaccountable Senate,” said Harper spokesman Stephen Lecce. “In contrast, Justin Trudeau is promising to appoint Liberals to appoint more Liberals to the unelected Senate.”

Trudeau also pledged to make information more accessible to the public by removing the often-punitive processing fees on Access to Information requests made of federal departments, allowing Canadians to make information requests of the Prime Minister’s Office among other departments and opening up the deliberations of the Board of Internal Economy, the all-party committee responsible for the administration of the House of Commons and its members.

“We will make information more accessible by requiring transparency to be a fundamental principle across the federal government,” he said.

Trudeau said a Liberal government would give more freedom and individual responsibility to MPs by allowing more free votes in the Commons, and by restoring independence to parliamentary committees.

In 2006, Harper came to power on the promise of transparency and accountability following the Liberal government’s sponsorship scandal, which involved the awarding of government contracts to Liberal-friendly advertising firms in the wake of the 1995 referendum on Quebec separation.

Critics say Harper has instituted unprecedented controls over the flow of public information, including requests under the federal Access to Information Act, muzzled government scientists and stifled responses to requests from journalists seeking comment from the government.