EDITORIAL: Power-mad move by the Liberals

Promises of commitment to openness and transparency abandoned

Published May 02, 2026  •  2 minute read

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to journalists before a Liberal caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Jan. 25, 2026. Photo by Blair Gable /Postmedia Network

Obtaining a majority government and immediately moving four parliamentary committees into secret sessions while adjourning the proceedings of a fifth suggests the new Mark Carney government isn’t any different from the old Justin Trudeau government.

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Both made a mockery of Trudeau’s promise all the way back in the 2015 election, which brought the Liberals to power to give “greater independence to parliamentary committees,” with a commitment to openness and transparency.

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The Liberals in power promptly abandoned that commitment after winning a majority government, and even after they were reduced to a minority from 2019 to 2025, used procedural tricks from filibustering to proroguing Parliament to impede parliamentary committees when they were probing government waste or political corruption.

There’ll be less of that — and perhaps none of it — now that the Carney government has a majority and therefore controls the majority of votes on the committees.

That said, even the Carney Liberals apparently sensed that it had gone too far when, after obtaining their majority government through floor crossings rather than winning it in a general election, they promptly moved the ethics, health, science and transport committees into secret sessions.

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That prevented opposition MPs from publicly discussing what transpired during the meetings as well as banning the media from reporting what went on behind closed doors.

At a fifth committee — veterans affairs — the Liberals adjourned prematurely, cutting off a Conservative motion to study the effects of last year’s budget on vets.

While this appeared to be a co-ordinated action by Liberal MPs in multiple committees acting like trained seals on marching orders from above, it’s hard to know what the purpose was, other than a show of arrogance.

Perhaps sensing they’d stepped on a rake, Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon entered the fray on Friday claiming that, despite the shenanigans, the Liberals remain committed to open committee meetings.

That is, as long as the Conservatives don’t come to them with the sole purpose of obstructing the proceedings.

That, of course, ignored the fact it’s exactly what the Liberals used to do when they were a minority government and didn’t want the majority of opposition MPs on committees passing motions the Liberals didn’t want approved.

We await the Liberals’ renewed commitment to transparency with a huge grain of assault.

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