A liar and a sneak! This of course came directly from you know who!
Bruce Campion-Smith
Ottawa Bureau chief
OTTAWA—International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda faces a fight for her political life as opposition MPs get set to call for her resignation in the wake of her admission that she ordered a government document to be doctored.
Oda is certain to face tough questions and likely calls for her to step down – in question period Tuesday after her bombshell revelation Monday that she had ordered a document changed to deny funding to the church-based group Kairos.
Liberal MP Bob Rae set the stage for the resignation call Tuesday morning, declaring that Oda had lost his party’s support.
“Ms. Oda doesn’t have my confidence in terms of our ability to believe what she has to say,” Rae told a news conference.
Her decision to doctor a government document and then mislead opposition MPs about it speaks to the “morality” of the Conservative government, Rae said.
“It’s not a process issue. It’s an issue about the character of this government . . . it’s about a government which has great difficulty telling the truth, it’s about a government which conceals information and hides facts and it’s about a government which then proceeds to make up stories and spin and twist when they get caught,” Rae said.
Oda revealed Monday that she was behind the mysterious “not” that was handwritten on a government document that ended funding for Kairos.
“The funding decision was mine. The ‘not’ was inserted at my direction,” Oda said in a surprise statement in the Commons Monday.
That was a direct contradiction of what she told a Commons committee in December when she claimed not to know who had altered the department document.
Yet the ‘not’ was inserted after two senior officials at the Canadian International Development Agency had already signed the document, making it appear like they endorsed the decision to deny Kairos any funding.
In fact, CIDA had recommended that Kairos get funding worth about $7 million over four years.
If Oda disagreed with the advice from the bureaucracy, she should have sent back the recommendation, rather than making a sneaky attempt to reverse the funding, Rae said.
“It’s an absolutely unacceptable, absurd way to run a government. It’s just wrong,” Rae said.
It’s still not known who was responsible for penning the word ‘not’ on the form though Rae charged that it was done with the knowledge – perhaps the insistence – of the Prime Minister’s office.
“Minister Oda could not have made this decision by herself. She could not have done what she did without instructions from the Prime Minister’s Office and for all we know, from the Prime Minister himself,” he said.
Rae downplayed questions whether Oda may have broken the law, saying it’s more a question for Parliament to decide whether she knowingly misled MPs.
Bruce Campion-Smith
Ottawa Bureau chief
OTTAWA—International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda faces a fight for her political life as opposition MPs get set to call for her resignation in the wake of her admission that she ordered a government document to be doctored.
Oda is certain to face tough questions and likely calls for her to step down – in question period Tuesday after her bombshell revelation Monday that she had ordered a document changed to deny funding to the church-based group Kairos.
Liberal MP Bob Rae set the stage for the resignation call Tuesday morning, declaring that Oda had lost his party’s support.
“Ms. Oda doesn’t have my confidence in terms of our ability to believe what she has to say,” Rae told a news conference.
Her decision to doctor a government document and then mislead opposition MPs about it speaks to the “morality” of the Conservative government, Rae said.
“It’s not a process issue. It’s an issue about the character of this government . . . it’s about a government which has great difficulty telling the truth, it’s about a government which conceals information and hides facts and it’s about a government which then proceeds to make up stories and spin and twist when they get caught,” Rae said.
Oda revealed Monday that she was behind the mysterious “not” that was handwritten on a government document that ended funding for Kairos.
“The funding decision was mine. The ‘not’ was inserted at my direction,” Oda said in a surprise statement in the Commons Monday.
That was a direct contradiction of what she told a Commons committee in December when she claimed not to know who had altered the department document.
Yet the ‘not’ was inserted after two senior officials at the Canadian International Development Agency had already signed the document, making it appear like they endorsed the decision to deny Kairos any funding.
In fact, CIDA had recommended that Kairos get funding worth about $7 million over four years.
If Oda disagreed with the advice from the bureaucracy, she should have sent back the recommendation, rather than making a sneaky attempt to reverse the funding, Rae said.
“It’s an absolutely unacceptable, absurd way to run a government. It’s just wrong,” Rae said.
It’s still not known who was responsible for penning the word ‘not’ on the form though Rae charged that it was done with the knowledge – perhaps the insistence – of the Prime Minister’s office.
“Minister Oda could not have made this decision by herself. She could not have done what she did without instructions from the Prime Minister’s Office and for all we know, from the Prime Minister himself,” he said.
Rae downplayed questions whether Oda may have broken the law, saying it’s more a question for Parliament to decide whether she knowingly misled MPs.
