Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

'The Government wishes to provide members with the information that is necessary for them to perform their duty of holding the Government to account'

by Aaron Wherry on Thursday, April 1, 2010 1:43pm - 35 Comments

The press gallery has provided an electronic copy of the documents tabled today. I’ve only flipped through the first half dozen, but so far the most interesting file—aside from the document that’s entirely in Farsi—might be this one.

Tags: Afghanistan, detainees, documents, torture, transfers

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Dee

Thankfully there are electronic copies but I imagine more than a few forests of paper have been wasted due to this Conservative farce. A waste of paper, our elected MPs time and a huge waste of taxpayer's money. A fiscally responsible government? What a joke.
http://intensedebate.com/people/TJCook TJCook

My source tells me that the .pdf Wherry links to here is actually a series of photos of Rob Nicholson flipping Canadians the bird.

Which has to be redacted, you know, for reasons of national security.
http://intensedebate.com/people/Fred_Moro Fred_Moro

Please tell me that it is an April fools joke.
Amateur Hour

Phone call for Mr. Kafka, please use the white courtesy phone.
Phone call for Mr. Kafka, please use the white courtesy phone.
Anon Liberal

At last, a first draft of Stephen Harper's hockey book!
http://intensedebate.com/people/danby danby

A perfect example of Conservative transparency.
Brian

Fascinating read. Couldn't put it down!

I eagerly anticipate the next volume the author publishes; perhaps a sequel will answer the staggering cliff-hanger.
http://intensedebate.com/people/SamDavies SamDavies

My personal favourite was page #9. The much more concise points raised just nailed it.
Standing By

They either really do think this is a joke, or they are so desperate NOT to reveal what happened that nothing else matters.

I suspect the former is a talking point, the latter is the reality.
common man

A minority gov`t by it nature must make an effort to give in to the demands of the opposition even if those demands are foolish.

There are probably several hundred requests by the opp. for the gov`t to release documents related to Afghanistan that will not be a risk to security. We are all aware of the opposition`s obsession with these documents. Now they have them. And still they complain.
http://intensedebate.com/people/PolJunkie PolJunkie

got all excited when I saw the header. that was mean, Aaron.
virtual north

this Afghan Detainee document sheds light…, in favour of darkness!
http://intensedebate.com/people/LynnTO LynnTO

Ooh! This is one of those children's version of the scratch card things, where they draw or write something in marker and then colour over it with black wax crayon!

Scratch the paper with a quarter, Aaron! See what appears.

Or, maybe it's a black-light document. You know, like the ones they used in Alias.
http://intensedebate.com/people/ZestyMordant ZestyMordant

Or maybe if you flip through all 6,200 documents really fast, there is an animation of a detainee stick figure being tortured in the bottom right corner.
Dave

Meh. I'm waiting for the Reader's Digest Condensed Book.
http://www.TennisVagabond.com Big Dave S

The government may be behaving unconscionably with regards the documents, but they will still win on the power struggle. It is clear that the will of parliament cannot exceed the national security needs of the executive. We all assume that there is no national security reason for withholding the bulk of documents, and that is probably correct. But it doesn't matter: it cannot be an uninformed parliament which makes that call (as a group that hasn't seen something can't know what it is they haven't seen). So the government my be wrong morally, but they will be found right legally. Imagine if they were fighting over war plans and a minority parliament voted to see them. Would their "supremacy" allow that? If not, then that supremacy cannot be absolute but must be tempered. Which means the best they can hope for is an arbitrator, which they have (although obviously not in the form they got).
In the UMPTEENTH such episode, the Conservatives will look terrible to those following the issue closely but will look reasonable to any casual headline reader.

Mike T.

Can you cite somoething which would support this tripe?
http://intensedebate.com/people/Thwim Thwim

You do realize your authorizing the executive to do absolutely anything they like.. such as "disappear" your mother/father on the grounds of national security and leaving no way to address it?

You're cool with giving the PMO those kinds of powers?

Does the S in "Big Dave S" stand for "Saddam"?

Charles H.

I've seen the advance proofs and frankly, I think the editor has missed the point of the work.

Sure, the line "██████████████████████████████████" has the same meaning as the original's "██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████", but without that ███████████████ it just has no soul.
http://intensedebate.com/people/ZestyMordant ZestyMordant

Comment of the week!
http://intensedebate.com/people/bergkamp bergkamp

"Scratch the paper with a quarter, Aaron! See what appears."

"If you flip through all 6,200 pages really fast, there is an animation of a stick figure being tortured in the bottom right corner."

Hahahahahaha. Thanks, I needed a good laugh this afternoon.

Either laugh or cry when government/bureaucracy do things like this.
http://twitter.com/wrikent3500 @wrikent3500

Hey CBC…..how about that Yes,Minister remake now….would seem timely or just rerun the originals
http://intensedebate.com/people/bergkamp bergkamp

Reruns of Yes, Minister are always timely, as far as I am concerned.

"If people don't know what you're doing, they don't know what you're doing wrong."
WMD

Odd. Bureaucrats apparently write to each other in Bairdspeak…
http://intensedebate.com/people/Stewart_Smith Stewart_Smith

So that's how carbon sequestration works.
Anon001

I don't think they're even trying anymore.
http://intensedebate.com/people/M_A_N M_A_N

Check Tonet