Two points here. First, the response yesterday from the lobbyists on the receiving end of the report. Do you see any patterns here?
One, the Canadian Gas Association:
"Neither Mr. Egan nor any employee of the Canadian Gas Association solicited, received or read a draft of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance pre-budget consultation report," said the statement, which was emailed to The Canadian Press.Two, GCI Group:
"...Hamilton's colleague Jamie Carroll said she didn't ask to receive the report nor did she circulate the documents once she received them. "It was destroyed as soon as she realized what it was," said Carroll."Three, Tactix Group:
"...Alan Young, co-president of Tactix, said in an email: "We did not ask for the report, we did not distribute it and we destroyed it within hours of receipt."Aren't those the interesting responses with their similar elements. Combined with the staffer resignation and the apology, well, it all went away tied up in a neat bunch with the staffer then, didn't it?
The second point, this leak seems to have gone without action for days. As made clear in the discussion following Question Period yesterday, apparently Conservative MP Block told committee members on Friday that she had fired the staffer responsible. But it wasn't until Monday night that the lobbyists were contacted and asked to destroy the report. That's rather unbelievable. Talk about a lack of controls on so many levels here.
Aside from the tremendous p.r. effort to finesse this as something that has been dealt with and let's all move along now, the facts are that sensitive financial information ended up in the hands of these lobbyists and appears to have remained there for indeterminate amounts of time without action by anyone. All we're hearing from the government is that the staffer has been fired and it's an "unfortunate occurrence!" That's not what we should be hearing from the government by a long shot.
