This can be a tough town to break into. Two dozen rookie Liberals got themselves elected in 2000 and on most days, you'd never notice most were here unless they actually vanished.

Which, as it happens, is precisely what Shawn Murphy did for half an hour Tuesday.

Mr. Murphy is a sandy blond 50-year-old from Hillsborough, P.E.I., who sits, most of the time, on the Commons finance committee. The committee is wading through last December's federal budget. Tuesday, it considered amendments to the budget's post-Sept. 11 national security provisions.

James Moore, the Alliance transport critic, doesn't like Liberal plans to charge $12 for a one-way air ticket and $24 for a round trip to pay for tighter security. Mr. Moore calls this charge a $2.5-billion tax on air travel and thinks it will wildly exceed the real cost of security. Tuesday, he proposed that the charge be dropped from $12 per leg of travel to only a few dollars.

Mr. Murphy's riding is on a big island frequented by airplanes full of tourists with good money. The security levy could cripple tourism to P.E.I., he said. And since the Finance Department hasn't been able to produce a single study justifying the charge, he said he'd support Mr. Moore's motion if it cut the charge in half, from $12 per leg to $6.

Well, this was all a bit much for Sue Barnes, the committee's new Liberal chairwoman. Already one opposition amendment had passed. That time her tormentor was Roy Cullen, another Liberal who believes the Prime Minister's Office installed Ms. Barnes as the committee's chairperson despite his campaign for the job. So Mr. Cullen reincarnated himself as a lion of the proletariat and helped pass a New Democrat amendment to put two labour union representatives on a new transport-security committee.

Well. Enough futzing around. When Mr. Murphy said he'd support this new opposition motion, Ms. Barnes brought down her gavel for a recess.

This is where I came in. An Alliance MP collared me on the sidewalk and lured me into the second half of the meeting with promises of a vanishing government MP. He was as good as his word.

As the Hon. Members took their seats, Mr. Murphy was nowhere to be seen. Some other guy was in his seat. Can't remember who; you try telling these guys apart.

Yvan Loubier (Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot) was in his usual foul mood. "If you want to have a different member, you change a Liberal member and it's no problem. Like magic."

The committee's larger problem was that Ms. Barnes, the chairwoman, was absent, too. Eventually Ken Epp took her place. Mr. Epp is the committee's deputy chairman, an Alliance member. "I call this meeting back to order as the properly elected chairman," Mr. Epp said. Immediately, two Liberals got up to leave.

 

"There's no quorum," Steve Mahoney (Liberal, Mississauga West) complained. Mr. Epp paid him no mind.

Well, then: The rest of the committee's Liberals got up and walked out. "Walk out," Stan Dromisky (Liberal, Thunder Bay) whispered as he passed Mr. Mahoney's chair.

"Would somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?" Mr. Mahoney asked.

At last Ms. Barnes showed up, at least 20 minutes late. Mock applause from the opposition MPs. "Can't a person go to the washroom around here?" she asked. She looked at the empty Liberal chairs. "There's no quorum at the moment."

The nine Liberal MPs filed back into the room.

Mr. Epp: "Madame Chairman, for your information, we passed a motion in your absence..."

Ms. Barnes: "I don't think so."

Jason Kenney (Alliance, Calgary Southeast) said he was "disgusted with the way this committee is being run."

By now the conversation was being interrupted sporadically by calls of "Where's Shawn Murphy?" Somebody moved that the committee send Mr. Murphy a get-well card.

Reg Alcock (Liberal, Winnipeg South) arrived and replaced some other Grit. More calls of "Where's Shawn Murphy?"

Mr. Alcock: "Who's Shawn Murphy?"

Then Mr. Murphy arrived, looking sheepish. He kicked Tony Valeri (Liberal, Stoney Creek) out of his seat. Mr. Alcock got up to leave too, less than five minutes after he had arrived. Then he sat back down.

Apparently Mr. Murphy had learned a lot in his absence. "I've received reassurances in the last half hour," he said, that the Finance Department will review the flight tax in the fall. And if the $12 levy is taking in more revenues than expenses justify, "it will be lowered."

The opposition MPs rolled their eyes. They voted on Mr. Moore's amendment, which would have cut a fee worth $2.5-billion in half. Mr. Murphy voted with his fellow Liberals. The amendment lost by one vote. But that's all right. The fee will be reviewed, and probably lowered, in only eight months. You have Shawn Murphy's word on it.

Paul Wells is a political columnist for the National Post.