Let me set up this blog post with a tweet earlier this evening from Rob Silver, a Liberal pundit and commentator who was a key player on Gerard Kennedy's leadership team:
Lib MPs who leaked caucus news today were (a) trying to hurt MI; (b) hurt their fellow MPs (c) sound cool to Taber; or (d) all of the above?
When I came to Ottawa in 2005 and got assigned to cover the Conservative caucus I was disappointed to discover that, despite my best efforts, I wasn't going to crack their caucus confidentiality. Five years later, I still can't. I ain't the only one. I've heard the same thing from lots of other press gallery colleagues. While there's certainly the occasional exception, the Conservatives (who are required to turn their BlackBerry in at the door before the weekly Wednesday caucus meeting) have been remarkably disciplined when it comes to caucus confidentiality.
My friend John Ivison, whose sources on the blue team are nearly unmatched in the press gallery, had a neat piece this week in the National Post about life inside the Conservative caucus, discovering that Ontario MP Larry Miller is a frequent and respected intervenor inside Conservative caucus meetings. But despite Ivison's connections, he was only able to discover that Miller is a respected caucus voice but no one will say just what it is that Miller or anyone else actually says in those meetings. And we only rarely get a whiff of any dissenting voice. (An alert Daniel Proussalidis of NewsTalk 1010 used a fire alarm in the middle of today's caucus meeting to get one of those whiffs)
The Conservative caucus meets in one of the large committee rooms in Parliament Hill's centre block. Across the Hall of Honour, in another committee room, the Liberal caucus meets at the same time. The Liberals, like the Tories, hold these meetings behind closed doors but, in the five years I've been here, they might has well do it live on CPAC. Liberal MPs keep their BlackBerrys on them and have as much live-blogged the “secret” proceedings to journalists who wait outside. Liberal leaders in the past have asked/ordered/begged for some caucus confidentiality — and Michael Ignatieff did so again today — but it just doesn't appear to be in a Liberal MP's DNA.
And so it was today. Some Liberal MPs are upset with the fact that their party is essentially supporting the government's decision to commit to a three-year training mission in Afghanistan. Some Liberal MPs want the troops home. Upset that their party is not doing what they want, they grabbed the first reporter they saw at the conclusion of this morning's “secret” Liberal caucus meeting and spilled the beans. This isn't a new thing, though. It happens all the time. The Liberals are famous among press gallery reporters for being perfectly happy to air their laundry — dirty or clean — in public.
Liberal MPs found The Globe's Jane Taber who writes this tremendously ironic sentence before reporting on the Liberal dis-unity: “Behind the closed doors of the party meeting, the Liberal Leader asked MPs not to talk to the media about their concerns.” Others spoke to Ivison who is able, through the disgruntled Liberal that spilled the beans to him, actually name names of the dissenters who thought they were speaking to a group who would respect their confidentiality. The Canadian Press has a similar accounting of the “secret” goings-on. Like I said: Might as well put the meeting on CPAC.
