Canadian Press reviews the tea leaves and suggests a Parliamentary debate is in the offing.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay told the House of Commons defence committee today Canada will not be leaving Afghanistan even after the combat mission expires in 2011…

His remarks echo Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai, the parliamentary secretary to the foreign affairs minister, who told the Commons in an impromptu debate on Afghanistan earlier in the week that the future mission will be brought before MPs. “I can tell the honourable member that when the mission is debated after 2011 by Parliament, he, as the Liberal foreign affairs critic, will have an opportunity to full participate in that debate,” Mr. Obhrai said in response to a question from Liberal MP Bob Rae.

The Scene. Nobody knows anything, and fewer remember what we thought the day before. So it is in Ottawa and so it shall always be, until and unless it isn’t.

In the absence of knowledge or memory, there is refuge in rumour and prognostication. So we guess when the next election will come, fascinate ourselves with polls that rarely change. Last week we discussed, at length and with great concern, how completely and indisputably screwed the Liberals were in Quebec. The latest poll, released yesterday, shows them up 10 points in that province, struggling everywhere else.

This week, the gossip concerns which member of the official opposition is preparing to switch allegiances. Such is the surreal nature of this place that a source within a government that once proclaimed that a coalition of opposition parties would violate the basic principles of our democracy is now, apparently, happy to report that various members of one of those opposition parties are nearly ready to coalesce about the Conservative party in direct contradiction, one assumes, of everything those individuals campaigned on last fall.

You’re forgiven if you find it hard to keep up. In fairness, it’s less like watching an afternoon soap and more akin to a bad sketch comedy series, acted and scripted by untreated ADHD sufferers.

Amid all this, Michael Ignatieff stood just after 2:15pm this afternoon and dared talk about the state of the federal government’s finances. Continue…

The Scene. We are—as a people, as a political class, as a town quite bored with itself—easily impressed. So it is that the Prime Minister’s overt display this weekend of something approaching personality is being roundly hailed as something approaching significance. Mr. Harper played the piano and sang. In public. And such is the state of things that, were you to judge only the reaction, you might assume he’d personally negotiated the surrender of the Taliban, or at least convinced Gary Bettman to move a hockey team to Hamilton.

By those same standards, similar huzzahs are almost certainly due to the leader of the opposition, who, let the record show, stood in the House this day and asked a question that was almost not entirely rhetorical.

This was, mere months ago, his trademark: an insistence that Question Period be something other than an exchange of slanders. Alas, since returning this fall, with a new mandate of opposition to justify, he’s been less reason and inquiry and more piss and vinegar. Take, for instance, the first of his questions on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week. Continue…

The Ottawa Citizen compares and contrasts.

There is a strong argument to be made that Omar Khadr was a child soldier, which makes this government’s treatment of him all the more egregious. The Conservatives have made a few half-hearted attempts to explain why they won’t accept his child-soldier status; most of the time, they’ve simply ignored the question, as if it weren’t important.

Meanwhile, a 25-year-old Burmese man in Saskatoon, Nay Myo Hein, was about to be deported this month when he got the news that two cabinet ministers had intervened to save him. Granting a stay of deportation and a residency permit was the right thing to do. But it raises the question: How can Canada be so compassionate to one former child soldier, and so indifferent to another? Canada shouldn’t merely reach out to help its citizens when the courts decide it has a legal duty, or when there are rallies in the streets. It should follow a consistent, transparent policy.

Fair enough. Unfortunately, the Citizen overlooks the important fact that Deepak Obhrai, the parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, possesses the power to determine who qualifies as a child soldier simply by looking the suspect in the eye.

Joe Volpe says he told Lawrence Cannon and Deepak Obhrai of Suaad Hagi Mohamud’s situation on June 12—more than two weeks before the Toronto Star’s first story on her plight—and followed up with a letter on June 18. And he suggests a later switch in responsibility for the file would have meant notification of the PMO.

The file’s transfer to Canada Border services around July 17 would have alerted the Prime Minister’s Office, Volpe said. ”It means the chief of staff in the communications branch of the PMO knows the file has gone from one minister to another. Put yourself in the shoes of the Prime Minister: People immediately below you have carriage of this file… they don’t tell you this is happening?”

A spokesperson for both Cannon and Obhrai refused comment yesterday on whether either minister might have informed the Prime Minister’s Office of the case.

See previously: I read the news today. Oh boy.

Dutifully covered by Kady, video of Abousfian Abdelrazik’s opening statement to the press this morning is available in two parts, here and here.

More from Paul Koring, Joanna Smith, Terry Pedwell and Andrew Mayeda.

The Scene. It was not otherwise a particularly remarkable day.

The Liberals persisted in asking the government to account for the current shortage of medical isotopes. The government insisted on doing no such thing. Jack Layton pouted about not receiving an invitation to the Prime Minister’s afternoon tea with Michael Ignatieff the other day. The Prime Minister jabbed his finger and waved his arms and declared the NDP an annoyance. John Baird scorned Mr. Layton with one answer and congratulated him on the birth of his granddaughter—Beatrice Dora Campbell, eight pounds and one ounce, born 12:03am Wednesday morning to Jack’s daughter Sarah—with the next.

Not even the early appearance of Irwin Cotler, the former justice minister rising immediately after Michael Ignatieff had dispensed with his three questions, seemed a cause for much concern. With the House breaking tomorrow for the summer, it appeared the Liberals were merely giving the venerable old lawyer a ceremonial opportunity to register a couple long-held grievances.

He asked first about Omar Khadr. Deepak Obhrai, the foreign affairs minister’s parliamentary secretary, rose with the perfunctory answer.

Mr. Cotler moved to the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik, the Canadian still bunking at our embassy in Sudan, awaiting an answer to the cruel riddle of his situation. “Mr. Speaker, Abousfian Abdelrazik is another abandoned Canadian citizen. In spite of the Federal Court’s severe rebuke, this government continues to violate Mr. Abdelrazik’s rights by refusing to bring him home,” Mr. Cotler posited. “The government has had two weeks to read a judgment that is unequivocal in its findings of fact and conclusions of law. Every day it waits is a continued violation of Mr. Abdelrazik’s rights. Does the government plan on appealing the court’s decision while delaying justice at Mr. Abdelrazik’s expense, or will it heed the court’s order and immediately return Mr. Abdelrazik home to Canada?”

It was here that something truly astonishing happened. Continue…

Kory Teneycke, July 15. “Mr. Khadr faces serious charges. There is a judicial process underway to determine Mr. Khadr’s fate. This should continue.”

Lawrence Cannon, Nov. 20. “Mr. Khadr faces very serious charges. He is being held and it’s our government’s intention to follow and respect the process that’s in place and, of course, to respect American sovereignty on this issue.”

Deepak Obhrai, Nov. 21. “Mr. Speaker, our position remains unchanged, because unlike many prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Omar Khadr has actually been charged with serious crimes and is in a judicial legal process to determine his guilt or innocence, and we support this process continuing.”

Stephen Harper, Jan. 13. “He has been accused of very serious matters. And there is a legal process that has to be taken.”

Barack Obama, today. “There are 240 people there who have now spent years in legal limbo. In dealing with this situation, we do not have the luxury of starting from scratch. We are cleaning up something that is – quite simply – a mess.”

The Scene. Shortly before 2 o’clock, in the midst of the capital’s first truly sweltering afternoon this year, a man in a dark suit and plastic animal mask—depicting a sheep, it seems—stood outside the Centre Block entrance reserved for Members of Parliament, handing out copies of former MP Garth Turner’s new book. Said book, as the animal mask was apparently intended to relate, is entitled Sheeple, a term apparently applied to people who often take on the characteristics—curly white hair covering most of the body, fondness for grazing, tendency to do as told—of sheep.

This was conceivably done to make some point. Or poke fun. Or sell a few books. Or some combination thereof. And, for sure, there should be nothing to prohibit anyone from making points, poking fun, or selling books about all that is obvious and absurd and obviously absurd about this place.

But then, in fairness, so much has changed in the six months or so since Mr. Turner was unceremoniously voted out of office. For one, the party to which he was most recently a member has found a new leader, this one fluent in all sorts of English verbs and tenses. For another, that leader has insisted on Question Period being something other than an opportunity to try and convict one’s rivals of various moral crimes.

Today’s session, for instance and as coincidence would have it, began with several fine and reasoned exchanges of inquiry and information. For perhaps a full half hour—with a man in a suit and an animal mask sweating away outside—the proceedings were both graceful and informative, genteel and respectful.

Oh, and boring. Dreadfully, dreadfully boring. Continue…

The Foreign Affairs committee was having a lovely time in Washington. Then the State Department asked about Question Period.

Leaving a meeting at the State Department late in the afternoon yesterday, I was asked by a State Department official what I thought of the doings in the House of Commons during the day’s Question Period. I confessed I had been in meetings all day and hadn’t heard. Finally on the Internet in the evening, I read the accounts of QP and of the hyper-partisan attacks. Again, it was saddening. He we were with major players, acting professional and serious with some of the high people in the American administration, while back home it was partisan business as usual. Our teams had let us down. We had put aside our differences here to make an impact, and under Mr. Sorenson’s help I think we did, but it was being eroded at home. The saddest part of it all was that it was a State Department official who alerted me to the conduct in our own Parliament. This is hokey stuff and deserves better from all of us.

As noted by one of our astute commenters, there was a lengthy debate in the House yesterday on the matter of Omar Khadr. It’s too long to copy-and-paste, but the start of the discussion can be found here.

At one point, Deepak Obhrai, the parliament secretary for foreign affairs, ventures this explanation as to why his government doesn’t consider Khadr a child soldier.

As I have said, the opposition members have been raising issues here about child soldiers and Canada’s human rights record. As I stated in my intervention with the Bloc, I was in Burundi where I met child soldiers and looked into their eyes. I can tell members that the reason those guys were child soldiers was economic. It was not a war on terrorism. What we are facing out here was not based on ideology.

The latest exchange on the fate of Omar Khadr, from Monday’s QP. Continue…

The Scene. After the House had finished discussing the American President’s upcoming visit, environmental regulations, funding for the arts, the aerospace industry, military contracts and the rights of women to fair and equal pay, the Bloc Quebecois’ Paul Crete rose to once again press the case of Omar Khadr.

“We are talking about a child soldier,” he said, “imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for more than six years and subjected to torture.”

Would the Prime Minister, Crete asked, commit to discuss the matter when he meets with Barack Obama next week?

Mr. Harper remained in his seat. The chair to his right, usually occupied by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, was empty. So to address this serious matter, the Conservatives sent up Deepak Obhrai, the parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs and a voracious reader.

“Mr. Speaker, our position regarding Mr. Khadr remains unchanged. Mr. Khadr faces serious charges that include murder, attempted murder and terrorism,” he said as he has said so many times before. “We continue to closely monitor this situation, including the work of the American committee formed to study the fate of the detainees, including Mr. Khadr. Any speculation is premature at this time.”

Though some will suggest that the handling of Mr. Khadr long ago descended to the level of farce, it was at precisely this moment that things turned from simply ridiculous to kind of sad. Continue…

At the conclusion of Question Period, the House proceeded with the pro forma. The tabling of documents, the presentation of petitions, the notice of motions for the production of papers, requests for emergency debates.

Liberal Mauril Bélanger got up and asked that the House move post-haste to discussion of the capital’s public transit strike. The Speaker agreed with the gravity of the situation, but noted that the weather outside was dreadful, a snow storm adding to the already icy hell that is Ottawa. In the interests then of everyone getting home safe—public transit obviously not being an option—the debate would be held Thursday.

Business moved then to Ways and Means Motion No. 1, resuming adjourned debate of the government’s budgetary policy. Up first, the leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition, the honourable member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore.

Most identifiable members of the government side had long since left. Bev Oda sat alone along the front bench, working through some paper work.

“Canada’s ship of state has entered some very rough and turbulent water and the captain’s steering through this storm has been erratic,” Michael Ignatieff said, barely restraining himself from breaking into that timeless sea shanty about the drunken sailor. “He misjudged, he misled, he misguided. At first he failed to act and then he acted irresponsibly. Now finally, he recognizes that we are in real danger. Finally, he is taking some measures to head for safety, but it has been a long time coming.”

Continue…