Tories Muzzling Officials: Opposition

The government operations committee now plans to order the bureaucrats — from Treasury Board, Human Resources and Public Works — to testify. The imbroglio comes a few days after Toronto-area MP Garth Turner was dumped from the party caucus for allegedly breaking confidentiality rules. On Tuesday, opposition MPs circulated an excerpt from Turner's website which charges that Harper's office ordered Conservatives to politicize the committee process. Turner says parliamentary committees are supposed to be non-partisan forums. "This government has actually had a PMO senior staffer in national caucus recently instructing MPs on how to politicize the committees and turn them into instruments of government policy," Turner wrote in a Monday blog entry. "Tory MPs are instructed to meet before committee meetings to plan strategy to help ministers, and to be assigned questions to ask witnesses." http://tinyurl.com/y26ozd [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on October 25, 2006]

Note: http://tinyurl.com/y26ozd