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3. Cooper was frightfully rude to the witness, in a way that might even compromise the committee’s future functioning. “This space here in this committees is for Canadians to come forward and give their testimony to share their experiences, and to victimize somebody like that is quite deplorable,” Liberal MP Iqra Khalid said. “I think that we need to keep the space open for Canadians and striking this from the record will ensure that the safety of this space has been restored.”

It’s an altogether bizarre episode that seems to reflect an increasingly censorious instinct in Ottawa

No point beating around the bush: That’s just absolute blithering twaddle. Not only was the event all over the news — which people actually watch, read and listen to, unlike committee transcripts and audio — but the Liberals are very keen indeed that everyone know what happened, the easier to conclude Scheer and his party are a bunch of unelectable yahoos.

There isn’t much precedent for this. In March of 1993, Val Bourgeois of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers implied to a committee studying proposed austerity measures that Brian Mulroney’s Tories were all a bunch of crooks. He was turfed, and the record properly purged. You have to look up news reports to find out what was actually said — and in 1993, perhaps, members didn’t see the internet coming.

In 2019, the Justice Committee knows about the internet. And it didn’t go nearly as far as the 1993 committee. The record of the May 28 meeting explains precisely what document Cooper quoted from, and that he named its author. And it retains Cooper’s attacks on the witness: “(Your comments) have no foundation. They’re defamatory and they diminish your credibility as a witness. … “You should be ashamed.”