Liberals shield Derek Lee from answering questions

The Liberals shielded one of their own from testifying about alleged lobbying at the same Commons committee where they have raked Rahim Jaffer over the coals about the same issue.

But when Lee arrived to face MPs, he argued the government operations committee was not the proper venue for answering those types of questions.

His caucus colleagues used up much of the allotted time with long procedural arguments and Lee left without having to respond to questions.

How utterly hypocritical. I think I now know why Liberals are in favour of the gun registry; they have a tendency to shoot themselves at every opportunity.


Kady live blogged the meeting here:

Some highlights: Martin grumbles that, as far as he can see, the chair has failed in exercising her duties as an independent, nonpartisan chair, what with allowing those heavyweight Liberals to hijack the meeting, and the witness to take part in the meeting, as though he were a member. He makes the absolutely legitimate point that this is just the sort of highhanded behaviour that he sees on the other side of the House, with ministers refusing to allow staffers to testify. Again, score one for Martin, who is absolutely right.

Warkentin tries to make it sound like there are more questions than answers, which, I've got to be honest, isn't really the case -- at worst, it's the same number as when it started. Well, other than the timeless question of why the Liberals are being such complete idiots, but it's not really fair to make it Lee's job to answer that one.

Ratansi grumbles that she actually gave her ruling way back at the beginning, but it went unnoticed. Probably because you managed to so in such a confusing, convoluted and contradictory way that they were honestly unaware of it. With that, she -- adjourns the meeting. Because that's what she does. Sigh.