Conservatives May Once Again be in Contempt of Parliament

Trouble is brewing over the leak of information that benefited Conservative supporters.

NDP MP Thomas Mulcair (Outremont, Que.) told The Hill Times the leak, combined with other events over the past several weeks that sparked allegations of possible financial benefits from use of government information by Conservative insiders, including a sudden sell-off in October of shares in a mining company that failed in a bid for federal approval of a gold development in B.C., suggest Conservatives connected or working for the government are contravening Mr. Harper’s 2006 public accountability and ethics pledges.

“It’s not just cronyism, it’s not just getting your buddies in the Senate, it’s not just naming people,” Mr. Mulcair said Thursday. “It’s literally having a system set up where there are some people who have privileged access to government information. People are being given privileged access illegally to information they have no right to, on documents that said right on the face of them ‘confidential,’ this would constitute a breach of [Parliamentary] privilege if released.”

The Conservative staffer who leaked the report, may be in contempt of Parliament. Will it matter? Probably not. They seem to do what they want and keep getting away with it.