Recently the editors of The Toronto Star asked me to write a column recounting my experiences as a member of Stephen Harper’s caucus for a series called “The Secret Capital.” It was published today, May 27. — Garth
MP paid big price for speaking out in Harper’s Ottawa
Garth Turner recounts events that led to ouster from Tory caucus
By GARTH TURNER
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
“This is the Prime Minister’s Office calling. I have the Prime Minister’s chief of staff on the line. Please hold.”
As I stood in my new, empty apartment in Ottawa a few weeks after the last election, phone in hand, it occurred to me I might want to remember this call. So, I made notes, scarcely believing the words I was recording.
Stephen Harper’s right-hand man, Ian Brodie, head of the most powerful and secretive PMO in national history, was telling me what I would be doing in the next few hours. You will issue a media release, he said, praising the Prime Minister for appointing David Emerson to cabinet. And you will immediately stop writing your blog.
But Brodie, the former Reform party organizer and University of Western Ontario professor, did not stop there. “If you want to be a f—ing independent,” he said, “then go ahead. We can arrange that.” And he was gone.
Eight months later, of course, he did, after I refused to recant my comments about Mr. Harper’s cabinet choices, or silence my writing.
One Wednesday morning in October of 2006, I walked into Ontario Conservative caucus in the ornate meeting room in Centre Block and noticed Doug Finley leaning against the back wall. As Stephen Harper’s director of political operations, he runs the entire Conservative backroom – a shadowy and omnipotent party operative – who never attended such gatherings.
But 20 minutes later, the penny dropped. A surprise motion was made to expel me. Taking the microphone to immediately speak against me were Jim Flaherty, the finance minister I was pushing hard in public to bring in family income-splitting, and Doug Finley’s wife and immigration minister, Diane. Moments later, in a show-of-hands vote most MPs did not participate in, or apparently understand, I was out. Shortly afterwards the full national caucus – with no vote – was told of my expulsion.
Within a few minutes, the computers in both my Hill office and riding office went dark, the result of an order, the House of Commons tech guys told me, that was issued by Tory whip Jay Hill even before the vote was taken to toss me from my own party.
Welcome to Mr. Harper’s Ottawa.
This is a world in which a member of Parliament, sent by the people to represent them, is cowed and threatened by an unelected staffer. It’s a place where a political party can silence internal debate and, in a hasty few moments, overthrow the results of an election.
It’s where Harper MPs are told they need permission from the PMO to speak to reporters, and are expected to carry wallet cards reminding them how to avoid the media. It’s a capital in which promised free votes don’t take place, where a government elected on openness fights to restrict access to information and public servants fear for their careers if they dare speak in the public interest. Where regulators are fired for seeking to regulate and federal scientists muzzled for talking about science. Where MPs like myself and Bill Casey are expelled for speaking, and former cabinet minister Michael Chang demoted for having convictions.
Some may counter, cynically, that it has always been this way. When governments change, the new guys move in, suck up power and put a lie to the notion this is a responsive democracy. True enough, to a degree. But Stephen Harper’s taken it all to a new level.
I’ve been an MP twice now, and with a dozen years between stints. I’ve served under four leaders and three prime ministers. I’ve run to be a leader, and sat at the cabinet table. I was a Progressive Conservative my entire life, and believed Mr. Harper when he told me, straight out, he’d run a moderate, mainstream, middle-of-the-road administration. But never did I expect – nor bow to – a demand that MPs be stripped of free speech, prevented from standing in caucus without permission, denied the ability to lobby for constituents, to raise any issue not party policy or simply put principle ahead of a leader’s vanity.
In contrast, the current Liberal caucus of which I now am a member functions like the Progressive Conservative ones of the past – free speech, unfettered debate, fierce lobbying for ideas and criticism of leadership when it is required. It is, doubtless, what voters expect MPs to do.
In Mr. Harper’s Ottawa, though, his MPs work for him, not the people. At least those who curry favour, keep their heads down, and hope against hope no one notices.
Garth Turner is the Liberal member of Parliament for Halton.
Online version is here.
