All of this, to me, begs the question: why are we nominating candidates for election if they can't get the proper security clearance to see the documents they need to do their jobs?

Public service employees and government contractors can't be hired unless they have the appropriate clearance. Why should it be any different for MPs?

Be sure to include Maxime Bernier, so he could leave some of the documents at his girlfriend's house for a month or two. We can't trust Conservatives with important documents, you know.

My point is that MPs that have a past history of questionable behaviour around private documents that weren't theirs and tried to use them to score cheap political points don't belong on this committee. Ditto for the MP (the name escapes me now) who sat in on the NDP caucus call he was invited to.

It'll never happen but it would be great if Harper could pick the opposition members of the committee, and the opposition could pick the Conservative members.

"Please stop misrepresenting what people are saying,,,"

Oh, dear. We can't certainly can't have that, can we?

I stand by what I wrote. In fact, I clarified what you said.

If you are right, then please advise Harper to get out in front of the issue, as he did in the case of the Manley panel. Of course, here he would need to pick MP's rather than independents. Nicholson's stance appears to be the more typical "let's see what the opposition comes up with" and then we will react. Although, his stance is not particularly clear… nor given how this government works is it particularly important.

It is virtually impossible for the Liberals and NDP to shut out the Bloc, if the Conservatives are not actively working with them. Since the Conservatives are unlikely to work with them on this issue, it may be time for another of Harper's surprises. If his picks are strong enough to pass public and parliamentary approval (and contain enough non-Bloc Quebec representation) then he could have another winner.

However, whether international law violations really took place should be decided by a forum 1) familiar with international law, 2) with access to all the information (including rebuttals) 3) skilled in sifting through masses of information, putting the pieces in context, differentiating between speculation and fact and reconciling contradictory information.

There are enough documents, that pulled out of context a partisan reporter could supplement any fantasy reality with juicy quotes and excerpts. We don’t need for the parliamentary committee to read the reports and then throw them out to the public, we need for them to decide if there are grounds for an inquiry with the skill set above.

"We never found out if the Liberals opened and went through stacks of clearly private documents belonging to the Conservatives."

And you say that as support for your claim that they can't be trusted to keep their mouths shut?

As the original post makes clear, they have been cleared for similar and more sensitive reviews of this sort before.

Besides, if the documents are as innocuous as Harper claims (with respect to the issue of torture), I'm really not sure how you could justify excluding them.