Mothercorp Just Doesn't Get It

I was reading The Black Rod this morning and enjoyed their connecting the dots exercise. Krista Erickson...who knew? What was even more interesting was the take by CBC insiders on this.

I read through the commnents, and frankly am at a loss with respect to some of the logic here particularly shown in later posts. Let us look at the facts folks:

1. Rodriguez is not a member of the house Ethics Committee, but was allowed to sit on that day by the Committe Chair, Paul Szabo. While this is not unprecidented, looking at the LPC parliamentary roster, he wouldn't have come up in my top 50 for making a special appearance on this committee.

2. Rodriguez, who as a habit doesn't use English in the House of Commons, somehow managed to formulate those questions in meticulous English. No mean feat.

3. The Chair of the Committee, allows him to pose questions that were completely outside the scope of the committee's investigation. This after disallowing the witness at the time, Brian Mulroney, from reiterating the terms of reference for the investigation - which is within the scope. Shouldn't this raise some eyebrows at the very least?

4. Rodriguez contends initially that the questions were created by his staff, and yet there he was with a fist full of handwritten questions. I work in a political office - if staff had anything to do with the creation of these questions, they would have been printed in 14 pt Arial, 1 1/2 line spacing, and in a binder - not hand written.

5. Parliamentary committees have the ability to subpoena witnesses, which makes them quasi-judicial bodies. Witnesses standing before these committees may be required to testify under oath. As such, they are compelled to address questions.

Stay with me folks, we're almost done....

A reporter, using a member of Parliament to forcefeed questions to a witness who is testifying under oath, in order to attempt to drive/create a story is not a problem how? This is not only a serious abuse of Parliamentary Privilege on the part of a sitting MP, but it also undermines the whole Parliamentary Committee process. If people at the CBC do not see this as a terribly big deal, they are more out of touch than I thought.