When the final report of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism was issued earlier this month, it was noted that when the group conducted hearings it chose to hear oral submissions from only 74 of the 150 individuals or groups that applied. Mario Silva, the Chair of the Coalition's Inquiry Panel, didn't make excuses or apologies for that:
Silva said some groups that wanted to appear before the committee were comprised of people who condemned the panel's work from the outset.
"I didn't really want to give a platform to individuals who had no time for us and so why should we have time for them?" said Silva.
That doesn't really speak to a desire to understand all points of view but since this was not an official government project and was originally presented as being privately funded — and came with a promise to reveal funding sources when the final report was issued — you could argue that they had a right to run the project the way they chose. After all, it says right on the group's About Us page:
The CPCCA is not affiliated with the Government of Canada...
Which would be fair enough except for that business of calling itself a "Parliamentary" coalition.
And what was that but an attempt to invoke the moral authority invested in the group's members by virtue of their election to represent us? And should I mention that they used government facilities for their meetings and hearings? They certainly seem to have gone out of their way to use their status as MPs to lend credibility to a project that had no formal sanction by parliament — and thus no accountability to it.
And now we learn, courtesy of John Geddes at Maclean's, that a big chunk of their operating capital came from the government with which they supposedly had no affiliation. Bear in mind that Jason Kenney is an ex officio member of the coalition and part of its steering committee while you ponder the fact that it received $451,280 in funds from Kenney's Department of Citizen and Immigration. I'd be curious to know how that's justified on the books since this had little to do with either citizenship or immigration.
As Geddes points out:
The CPCCA's broad membership largely insulated it from partisan scrutiny. Along with well-known Conservatives like Reid and Manitoba MP Candice Hoeppner, the MPs who joined included prominent Liberals such as interim party leader Bob Rae, and veteran New Democrats like Peter Stoffer and Pat Martin. That opposition support, and close compatibility with Kenney, made it unlikely the coalition's financing, however unusual, would be criticized from within political circles.
Pretty sweet deal, I'd say. Use the trappings of elected office to give your own project prestige and the taxpayer's money to supply the bulk of the funding, but remain in a position to be able to blow off those who don't agree with you and guarantee anonymity to the donors of an additional $127,078 — yes, the promise to reveal funding sources was dropped somewhere along the way.
All the advantages of being affiliated with government and none of the accountability.
It sounds like the comments from Rob Ford's executive committee about the people who came out to the budget meeting yesterday.