The parliamentary headquarters for Her Majesty’s Official Opposition is at 180 Wellington Street. Sometimes known as the South Block, it sits across the street from Parliament’s West Block and Confederation Building, and houses a variety of government offices in addition to the Opposition Leader’s Office (OLO).
Stephane Dion’s Liberals now occupy these offices, of course, but, for the last few years it was the offices of the Conservative Party and one of its predecessor parties, the Canadian Alliance.
Now, normally, when one party turns the keys over to another party, the departing party makes sure there is not a scrap of paper hanging about. Well, it seems that the Conservatives failed in that mission when they moved in to government for the Liberals have come upon boxes and boxes of records left behind.
Last week, Liberal MP Mark Holland claimed that, among the records left behind by the departing Conservatives, was the documentary evidence to support his claim that the Alliance paid an MP to step aside so that Stockwell Day could enter Parliament. It is illegal to pay an MP to do that and Holland’s claims have not been tested in court and an earlier police investigation into these allegations ended without the charges being substantiated. The former MP, Jim Hart, rejected the accusations.
Today, Holland and his colleague Marlene Jennings held a press conference in the Wellington Building outside the OLO in which they announced they will be handing back these boxes and boxes of records to the Conservatives. Here’s the statement released by the Liberals:
Liberals Return Confidential Personnel Files to Conservatives
Ottawa – The Opposition Liberals today handed over boxes of documents belonging to the Conservative Party to illustrate that this self-proclaimed “accountable” government needs to be accountable for the privacy of all Canadians.
“Today we're returning five years worth of personal performance appraisals of Conservative staffers that this government negligently left behind,” said MP Mark Holland.
“These are confidential documents on their own staff. Such gross ineptitude makes me very nervous about how this government handles other issues of a private nature,” he added.
Liberal Justice Critic Marlene Jennings agreed.
“This is a government that purports to carry the torch on accountability, and yet has shown a cavalier disregard for the privacy of its own employees,” she said. “One has to seriously wonder just how safe the privacy of other Canadians is under this government's watch.”
Liberals voluntarily decided to return these documents that were left behind in the offices of the Official Opposition after determining they were of no public interest. They are contained in boxes that also held faxes that appear to show Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and former candidate Jim Hart made a financial deal to get Mr. Hart to resign his seat.
Mr. Holland said the Liberal caucus is retaining possession of some of the documents to determine whether or not they contain other issues that are in the public interest.
Yes, as I wrote on my own blog, how can the Liberals accuse the government of being lax with privacy concerns when they themselves rifled through these “confidential documents”, chose which ones they were going to use for a political attack, then sent the rest back to the proper owners?
I believe the Liberals blundered on this one badly.
If you're going to use the privacy issue, then you shouldn't have kept some for yourself and used them to attack Day. Once you made that choice, even if it isn't attracting the kind of political attention you want, you can't then turn around and decide you want to make yet another kind of political attack, especially when the accusation is self-contradictory.
Mark Holland's attack-a-day routine has become a sideshow. Why is the leader's office letting this guy trample all over their messaging? Is there any messaging control coming from the leader's office, for that matter?