OTTAWA - Liberal MP Albina Guarnieri wants the Commons foreign affairs committee to summon Wajid Khan to explain a $13,000 trip he took to the Middle East and the secret report he wrote about it for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Khan, a former Liberal MP who defected earlier this month to the Tories, has been serving as Harper's special adviser on the Middle East and South Asia since the summer.
When he first took on the role, Khan promised that his findings and recommendations would be made available to MPs from all parties. However, the prime minister's office has since insisted that the report must remain confidential.
Guarnieri, who represents a neighbouring riding to Khan's in Mississauga-Streetsville, said there is no justification for keeping the report secret.
"He's not a privy councillor so he's not bound by any oath of secrecy. And he's not a private citizen," she said in an interview.
Khan was acting as a member of Parliament when he spent 19 days in September touring Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Lebanon. Consequently, Guarnieri said taxpayers have a right to know whether they got any value for their money.
"Canadians who paid for Mr. Khan's trip didn't even get a comment card," she said.
Privately, Conservatives accused the Liberals of a double standard. They noted that former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin never released any reports from his many special advisers, not even when they were requested through Access to Information.
Guarnieri forwarded a motion Tuesday to the clerk of the foreign affairs committee, asking that the committee summon Khan to discuss his trip and his report. It will be considered when the committee resumes work at the end of the month.
The three opposition parties hold a combined majority of seats on the committee and Guarnieri said she can't imagine any opposition MPs not supporting her motion.
Khan could decline the invitation to appear before the committee but Guarnieri said the continued refusal to release or even talk about his report raises questions about the value of his work.
"Is there nothing worth publishing?"
Liberals suspect the report, if it even exists, may be superficial or that it may have been written by a foreign affairs bureaucrat.
Sam Hanson, the bureaucrat who accompanied Khan on his trip, refused Tuesday to talk to a reporter, saying "I have no such authorization."
Harper's newest MP has been causing the prime minister grief on another front as well.
It was revealed this week that Khan's Toronto car dealership loaned $268,000 to Khan's former Liberal riding association and to Khan's election campaigns in 2004 and 2006.
At the time, candidates were legally prohibited from accepting more than $1,000 in corporate donations and could personally donate no more than $5,000 to their own campaigns.
They could legally take out loans but Liberal officials say Khan's loans could be deemed illegal contributions if his former Liberal association, now officially defunct and deeply in debt, is unable to repay them.
The loans came to light only after Elections Canada delisted the Liberal association in Khan's riding last month for failing to file its annual financial reports in 2004 and 2005. The reports were subsequently filed and the watchdog agency is now reviewing them, along with an NDP request to investigate the alleged financial irregularities.
Harper's communications director, Sandra Buckler, has said the prime minister was unaware of any problems in the riding when he welcomed Khan into the Tory fold. And she intimated that the financial dealings of Khan's former association is a Liberal problem.
But the Liberals insist they too had no inkling of the problems until this week. They are setting up a new Liberal association in the riding, which won't be burdened by the debts piled up under Khan.
"Mr. Harper has welcomed Wajid Khan and all the key players (in his former riding association) so they're his problems now," said Guarnieri.
