Secret Sessions and Poaching Attempts: How Carney's Liberals Are Silencing Parliament

A health committee moved behind closed doors without explanation. A Conservative MP says Liberals offered her inducements to cross the floor. Another MP accuses the government of "dominating" every committee. The democratic rot is accelerating.

Three stories broke this week that, taken individually, each raise troubling questions about the Carney government's respect for parliamentary democracy. Taken together, they reveal a pattern: a government that won its majority through floor crossings is now using that majority to shut down scrutiny wherever it appears.

The Health Committee Goes Dark

The Standing Committee on Health — one of Parliament's most important oversight bodies — was moved behind closed doors this week. The Liberals who control it have refused to explain why.

The National Post reported that when journalists sought answers, the government offered none. No procedural justification. No public interest rationale. No timeline for when ordinary Canadians — or their elected representatives in the Opposition — would be permitted to know what the committee is discussing or deciding.

This is not a trivial matter. Parliamentary committees exist to scrutinize government. The public nature of committee hearings is a foundational democratic safeguard: it is how citizens learn what their government is doing in their name with their money. When a committee goes in camera without explanation, the assumption has to be that someone in government does not want the public to hear what is being said.

What is the Carney government discussing behind closed doors in the health committee? Canadians have been told, effectively, that it is none of their business.

Conservative MP Brock: Liberals Are "Dominating" Every Committee

The health committee closure did not happen in isolation. Conservative MP Larry Brock gave an exclusive interview to the Western Standard this week, accusing the Liberals of systematically "dominating" parliamentary committees across the board — and calling newly-minted Liberal MP Marilyn Gladu a "sellout."

Gladu crossed the floor to the Liberals earlier this year, joining the wave of defections that handed Carney his manufactured majority. Brock's accusation is pointed: that the floor crossings were not merely political realignments, but the deliberate acquisition of bodies needed to control committee chairs, committee votes, and committee agendas.

The math is stark. Committees are structured to reflect the balance of the House. Before the floor crossings, the Liberals did not have majority control of most committees. After acquiring four additional MPs — including Gladu — they gained or consolidated control of committee majorities. The result: a government that can now move committees in camera, block witness lists, suppress reports, and terminate investigations on any subject it finds uncomfortable.

Brock's frustration is shared across the Conservative caucus. When a government can use committee majorities to prevent committees from meeting in public, invite only favorable witnesses, or simply vote to adjourn inconvenient hearings, the entire oversight function of Parliament is neutered.

Conservative MP Terry Newman: "They Tried to Poach Me"

Then there is the testimony of Conservative MP Terry Newman, published this week in the National Post. Newman went public with a direct accusation: the Liberals attempted to recruit her to cross the floor.

This is extraordinary. A sitting Conservative MP — elected by her constituents as a Conservative — is saying that agents of the Liberal government approached her and offered inducements to switch sides. She declined. She is now speaking out.

Newman's account matters for several reasons. First, it confirms what many have suspected: the floor crossings that gave Carney his majority were not spontaneous. They were, at least in part, the product of organized recruitment efforts by the governing party. Second, it raises the question of what was offered. Floor crossings don't happen in a vacuum. MPs who cross the floor typically receive something in return — a cabinet post, a committee chair, a promise of a Senate appointment, or simply the calculation that the Liberals will win and survival requires switching teams.

Third — and most importantly — it raises the question of how many other MPs were approached who have not yet gone public.

In the days of Trudeau's SNC-Lavalin scandal, we learned that senior Liberals pressured the Attorney General — a cabinet minister — to interfere in a criminal prosecution. The lesson that government never fully learned is that the pressure to abandon principle rarely stops at one person. If Liberals were willing to approach Newman, who else was on the list?

The Pattern Is the Point

A health committee locked away from public view. A caucus member accusing the government of systematically controlling Parliament through committee domination. A Conservative MP saying Liberals tried to buy her defection.

None of these stories will make the evening news on CBC — a broadcaster that received $1.4 billion in federal funding last year. None will be the subject of sustained editorial campaigns in the government-subsidized legacy press. The $600 million in media bailouts the Liberals distributed to Canadian news organizations did not come with formal editorial conditions. They didn't need to.

What Canadians are watching — if they are watching — is the methodical construction of a government that cannot easily be held accountable by anyone. A manufactured majority. Dominated committees. Secret hearings. Recruitment of opposition members. And a media ecosystem too dependent on government goodwill to press hard on any of it.

The Carney government promised to restore democratic norms after the chaos of the Trudeau years. What it has actually delivered is a more sophisticated version of the same playbook — executed by a man with a Goldman Sachs education and a Davos address book.

Terry Newman said no. Not everyone has.