Jay Fox has the toughest job in Ottawa these days as he tries to get recalcitrant Conservative staffers to appear before a committee and account for their actions.
The bailiff was busy earlier this week on the phone and in his car, trying to issue summonses to two scheduled witnesses: Dimitri Soudas, director of communications in the Prime Minister's Office, and Jillian Andrews, a policy adviser in the office of the Minister of Natural Resources.
Mr. Fox called each of them three times on Tuesday and Wednesday, and left messages. After confirming they were actually at work, he showed up at their offices, only to be turned away by security.
Bailiffs such as Mr. Fox are not about to run out of business in Ottawa, as the Conservative government vows to continue protecting junior staffers from the "bullying" and "humiliating" tactics of opposition MPs on parliamentary committees.
With only a few weeks before MPs head home for the summer, this is the latest round in the fight between Parliament and the government. The opposition won a victory when it got the right to see confidential documents related to the transfer of detainees in Afghanistan. As aides are in hiding and opposition MPs try to embarrass the government on the issue, the parliamentary committees are dissolving into shouting matches, and the likes of Mr. Soudas could face sanctions, including a fine.
The government's case is clear, but not without contradictions. As he appeared uninvited before a committee to replace one of his staff members on Wednesday, Transport Minister John Baird said he was embodying Canada's system of ministerial responsibility, and simply standing in for vulnerable political aides as young as 22.
But someone like Mr. Soudas, albeit only 30, is eligible for a six-figure salary and deemed competent enough to speak for the entire Harper government on the main issues of the day. His profile is higher than many ministers, and he doesn't need to be protected from the opposition.
Critics charge that the Conservatives are trying to unilaterally rewrite the rules of Parliament, which state that no one, except MPs, can ignore an invitation before a committee. In so doing, the government is going against the very actions that its members undertook when they were in opposition and quizzing Liberal aides involved in the sponsorship scandal.
There are also limits to the government's stand in favour of ministerial responsibility. For instance, would ministers be ready to resign whenever their staff make a mistake? The opposition has argued that if this was the case, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt would have had to take the fall for her staff's failure to account for confidential Natural Resources documents left in a CTV studio.
Despite the criticism, the government is achieving its goals, at least internally. There is an army of loyal and partisan ministerial staffers in Ottawa who were increasingly afraid of being hauled out in front of a committee. With their ministers vowing to stand up for them, ministerial staff feel more united as a team, according to sources.
And the Conservatives are sending a message to opposition MPs that it is time to stop using their majority on committees to call inquiries at the first hint of an embarrassing situation, such as the Jaffer-Guergis affair or an aide's interference in the access to information process.
Still, committees are a crucial cog in Ottawa, a city with many questions in search of answers. Two months after her ouster from the Conservative caucus and her resignation as the minister of state for the status of women, independent MP Helena Guergis stood up in the House of Commons on Thursday and asked to get a copy of the secret letter in which the PMO forwarded unknown allegations about her to the RCMP.
The opposition also wants to get its hands on the letter. But if they want to hear from its author, PMO chief of staff Guy Giorno, they may need to call a bailiff.