Manning the Panel

And a bonus feature: "but the emails!"

Last week, in amongst the flurry of controversy/excitement about the emails, Preston Manning was appointed to chair the Public Health Emergencies Governance Review Panel (PHEGRP!), which is to report by next November.

It appears that this will be largely Manning’s show: He’ll be advising the government on who the other panelists should be. Without waiting for the rest of the panel, he has opened up public consultation, asking just one question: What, if any, amendments to legislation should be made to better equip the province to cope with future public health emergencies?

This question brings me to my first objection to Manning’s appointment as Panel chair: if the primary focus of the panel is on the need for changes to legislation, then perhaps the province might have appointed someone with, well, a law degree. Manning has never governed, and has not been to law school. Some of the legal issues that come into play are reasonably complex: for instance, the case for revisiting the Public Health Act, or the constitutionality of amending the Human Rights Code to protect the unvaccinated. Manning’s writing about the Charter and COVID doesn’t demonstrate a strong understanding of the idea of reasonable limits on Charter rights, for example.

My second objection is that Manning has taken stances that suggest that he has an axe to grind. He was so concerned about what he saw as violations of freedoms and damages imposed by COVID restrictions that he set himself up as the leader of a National Citizen’s Inquiry into the pandemic response. And wrote a fictional account of what he imagined that Inquiry would report and the political aftermath. All of which tells us that he is not an impartial or dispassionate panel chair.

This fictional report is quite the read (h/t to ‘@disorderedyyc’). It reads like a weird fever-dream, where the public embraces the idea of the commission, and $10 million is fundraised to support its work.

There are hints of paranoia: “The individuals selected to be COVID Commissioners included several medical practitioners and scientists who had publicly expressed reservation concerning the health protection measures adopted by the Trudeau government and had been severely censured for doing so.”

In the fever-dream, balancing perspectives has no place: “every effort was made to invite representatives of all the groups whose concerns about the federal government’s management of the COVID crisis had been systematically ignored to appear before the Commission and to tell their stories. Suffice it to say that much of this testimony was bitter, emotional, and extremely damaging to the reputation of the Trudeau administration.”

And at the end of the dream, after this imaginary commission had righted Canadian politics and installed a new government, Manning fantasizes that the House of Commons would be left to contemplate whether public servants and politicians should be “held financially liable and/or criminally responsible for the damages suffered” because of pandemic restrictions, or whether they should just be fired and disciplined.

My third objection has to do with Manning’s ‘stature’ as a sort of senior statesman in Canada. Since leaving politics, he founded the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. This organization - now renamed the Canada Strong and Free Network — has been devoted to developing conservative advocacy and political training for conservatives. Which is fine. But it isn’t a non-partisan legacy. And for something as important as looking back at the province’s COVID response, appointment of a non-partisan panel chair would send a very different message.

Appointing the panel is Premier Smith’s effort to placate those supporters who expected to see her do more to ‘right the wrongs’ of the pandemic response. I imagine that she hopes that establishing the panel with Manning at its head will allow her government to shift focus away from COVID toward other issues that might be more electorally palatable. This assumes that Manning will work quietly and in the background: whether that proves to be the case will be interesting to see.

Bonus feature: but the emails!

As of this morning, no sign of the emails on the government email system.

Where does this leave us?

Probability: Zero - Two experienced reporters just invented them.

Probability: Low - Two or more individuals invented the story and duped the CBC reporters.

Probability: Low - Someone in the Premier’s office mused about sending emails, but never actually sent them. Those who heard the musings leaked it.

Probability: Moderate - Emails were sent to and from personal email accounts.

If that’s the case, I would assume the recipient in the Crown Prosecutor’s office would have an obligation to disclose this to their director. Focus now shifts to that office…