The Commons: Over and over again

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 7:32 PM - 13 Comments

The Scene. At some point some months ago, it was decided—by whoever makes such decisions in whatever underground lair the important decisions are rendered—that Tony Clement would not be standing in the House any more to account for his actions in regards to the G8 Legacy Fund. Presumably, this seemed like a good idea at the time. Conceivably, this was thought to be fine communications strategy, at least insofar as “communications” now mostly involves figuring out how best to steer conversations away from any kind of reflection.

This decision was likely based on the premise that the questions would eventually cease to be asked if Mr. Clement refused to respond. That the opposition parties would get bored or distracted or frustrated, and the questions about gazebos and such would subside and everyone would move on to something less consequential.

Alas, the solution has become a communications problem of its own. For here we are, months later, and the questions have not ceased. Each and every day (or nearly so), at least one MP from the NDP side is sent up to ask at least one more question of or related to Mr. Clement. And each and every day (or nearly so), Mr. Clement sits and does nothing on his own behalf, except maybe to mutter at the question asked of him or applaud the answer offered for him.

We arrive at this daily spectacle as a result of what must only be termed an epiphany on the opposition side. Continue…

This week in mocking Parliament

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 12:36 PM - 1 Comment

The NDP persisted again yesterday in asking questions about the G8 Legacy Fund. With Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird away from the House, the government side, again, sent up Deepak Obhrai to respond.

Mr. Obhrai’s responsibility for the management of the G8 Legacy Fund remains unclear. It would seem he is responding as the current parliamentary secretary to the minister (Mr. Baird), who, in a previous portfolio (Industry Transport), had the authority to sign-off on the requests made by Tony Clement and Mr. Clement’s mayors.

The list of Conservative MPs who could be said to have more to do with the expenditure of public funds for infrastructure and/or the ethical standards for the behaviour of cabinet ministers would include some or all of: Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Industry Minister Christian Paradis, either of Mr. Paradis’ two parliamentary secretaries (Pierre Poilievre and Mike Lake), Transport Minister Denis Lebel, Mr. Lebel’s parliamentary secretary Pierre Poilievre, government House leader Peter Van Loan, Mr. Van Loan’s parliamentary secretary, Tom Lukiwski, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mr. Harper’s parliamentary secretary, Dean Del Mastro. Not to mention Mr. Clement himself.

Whatever Mr. Obhrai’s relevance, the Conservatives seated around him seem to find great humour in watching him stand and respond.

This week in ministerial accountability

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 3:48 PM - 1 Comment

While Tony Clement was more than happy on Monday to talk to reporters outside the House about the G8 Legacy Fund, he continues to remain seated when opposition members rise to inquire about the matter during Question Period. And with John Baird away from the House of Commons, opposition questions directed at Mr. Clement are now being handled by Deepak Obhrai, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Obhrai is an able reader of the government’s preferred lines, but his exact level of responsibility for the administering of the G8 Legacy Fund is unclear.

Jack Layton 1950-2011

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 22, 2011 at 9:03 AM - 11 Comments

A statement issued this morning by the family of NDP leader Jack Layton.

We deeply regret to inform you that The Honourable Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, passed away at 4:45 am today, Monday August 22. He passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by family and loved ones. Details of Mr. Layton’s funeral arrangements will be forthcoming.

9:11am. Bob Rae, Carolyn Bennett, Hedy Fry, Wayne Easter, Cathy McLeod, Keith Martin and Governor General David Johnston are among those paying their respects.

9:23am. John Geddes explored Jack Layton’s life and times for this Maclean’s cover story last June. We wrote about his new fight with cancer for this cover story earlier this month.

9:28am. Condolences from Rodger Cuzner, Lewis Cardinal, Colin Carrie, Mike Sullivan and John McCallum.

9:36am. NDP deputy leader Libby Davies talks to reporters in St. John’s.

“He was a great Canadian. He gave his life to this country. His commitment to social justice and equality and a better Canada in the world and at home and I think that’s how people saw him,” Davies told reporters. “They saw him as someone who deeply, deeply cared for people. And they saw that in the campaign and all his work. They saw the courage that he had. He faced cancer and he kept on working, doing his job, because he felt so strongly about what he believed in, so I think people think of him as a great Canadian and we think of him as a great leader, in a political sense but (also) in a personal sense.”

9:43am. More on the life of Jack Layton from the CBC, Toronto Star and Canadian Press.

He was a believer. He made that clear in the first sentences of “Speaking Out Louder:” ”Politics matters. Ideas matter. Democracy matters, because all of us need to be able to make a difference.”

9:54am. Mr. Layton’s Facebook page has become a makeshift memorial.

9:59am. Greg Fingas marks the NDP leader’s passing.

After spending a decade laying the foundation, Jack Layton has tragically died before getting to complete the house that so many said couldn’t be built. For now, there’s little to do but to offer condolences and grieve the loss of a great Canadian and friend. But hopefully Layton’s inspiration will only encourage us to finish what he started.

10:01am. A statement from the Prime Minister. Continue…

Why Harper is never in the Stampede parade

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, July 4, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 5 Comments

Photographs by Mitchel Raphael

Security, the royals and the parade

The Canadian tour of Prince William and Kate includes a stop at the Calgary Stampede. One MP said local officials hoped the couple would actually be in the Stampede parade, but that doesn’t look like a possibility because the security costs would be too high with so many tall buildings along the route. Ever since Stephen Harper became PM, Conservatives have been hoping to get him into the parade. But, according to the MP, the security costs for that to happen were estimated a few years ago at $300,000. The Windsors would likely cost a lot more. So instead crowds will see the royal couple do the route in reverse (a 20-minute car trip as opposed to the hours-long parade), ending up at Bow Valley College, where they will officially start the parade.

MacKay knows if you have served

At Party Under the Stars, a fundraiser to help purchase electronic and other recreational equipment for troops in Afghanistan, Defence Minister Peter MacKay told the crowd that whenever anyone sees a member of the Canadian Forces they should go up and thank them. When Capital Diary asked MacKay’s aide if the minister practises what he preaches, the aide confirmed that he did and added that his boss can spot armed forces personnel even when they are out of uniform, by looking for certain bags or signs. One time in Frankfurt’s airport he went up to an out-of-uniform Canadian soldier and thanked him. The shocked soldier asked, “How did you know I was in the military?” MacKay just smiled.

Continue…

The Commons: Getting the words right

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 7:37 PM - 27 Comments

So the House is almost entirely agreed. Colonel Gadhafi of Libya is an undesirable despot, guilty, it would seem, of various abuses and disgraces, likely up to and including crimes against humanity and thus, through some combination of diplomacy, humanitarian aid and bombs, he must be prevented from doing any further harm to the people of Libya, they who should be allowed to proceed soon enough to freedom and democracy.

Now, if only the House could agree on how best to describe the process by which this general notion might be made real.

“Our strategy is clear,” John Baird proclaimed this morning. “By applying steady and unrelenting military and diplomatic pressure while also delivering humanitarian assistance we can protect the civilian population, degrade the capabilities of the regime and create the conditions for a genuine political opening. At the same time we can bolster the capacity of the Libyan opposition to meet the challenges of post-Gadhafi Libya and to lay the foundations of a state based on the sovereignty of the people.”

On this, the Foreign Affairs Minister asked the House of Commons to endorse a three-and-a-half-month extension of Canada’s involvement in the NATO mission over and around Libya. And it was on the occasion of this request that Jack Harris, the NDP’s shadow defence minister, stood a short while later to wonder if we might call this “regime change.” Continue…

The bubble is getting crowded

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, April 9, 2011 at 11:11 AM - 31 Comments

The Globe surveys Conservative reticence.

In Calgary East, Tory incumbent Deepak Obhrai has come under fire for being the only candidate not to respond to an invitation for an all-candidates debate on Tuesday … Calgary-Nose Hill Tory incumbent Diane Ablonczy has also indicated she may boycott any all-candidate forum. But this shyness is hardly an Alberta-only phenomenon. Julian Fantino, who snatched the Toronto-area riding of Vaughan away from the Liberals in a by-election last November, refused to attend all-candidates debates in that campaign and has indicated he’s unlikely to do so now.

Three hundred and eight elections

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 9:23 PM - 48 Comments

The Liberal candidate in Manicougan has been dismissed over offensive remarks about Aboriginals. London West incumbent Ed Holder doesn’t want to debate health care. Calgary East incumbent Deepak Obhrai doesn’t want to debate his opponents at all. There is journalism drama in Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock and sign drama in South Shore-St. Margaret’s. The candidates explain what matters most in Oakville and the candidates in Chilliwack-Fraser Canyon meet the Rotarians.

Conservative candidate Mark Strahl was asked about his “tainted” nomination and his apparent lack of “real world” business experience. Liberal candidate Diane Janzen was asked how she could be “truly a Liberal” with her Christian faith and her small-c conservatism. New Democratic candidate Gwen O’Mahony was asked about her party’s opposition to the purchase of fighter jets when Canadians are sending their sons and daughters “into harm’s way” overseas.

Will Parliament decide?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 3:11 PM - 3 Comments

Philippe Lagasse questions the potential precedent of putting the future of the Afghan mission to another vote in Parliament. Though government commitments on this subject matter are obviously theoretical in nature, there have been at least vague insinuations of responsibility made.

In October 2008, both the Defence Minister and the parliamentary secretary to the Foreign Affairs Minister indicated a role for Parliament in the discussion. In June 2010, the Defence Minister, while waving the red herring of the previous motion on the mission in Afghanistan, was rather resolute on the subject of parliamentary will: ”We have to respect Parliament and the motion is clear. We can’t be fighting for democracy in Afghanistan and ignore it at home … The expressions of interest in a role for Canada beyond 2011 from Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Rae and others are of great interest. But until such time as that motion reads differently, we will respect that motion.”

More recently, while drawing out a loophole on training that had previously been denied to have existed, the Prime Minister’s Office put the onus almost entirely on parliament’s special committee on Afghanistan. That committee filed a report in June that called for the “Parliament and government of Canada enter into an intensive and constructive discussion as soon as possible about Canada’s work in Afghanistan and the region for the post July 2011 period.” “A final decision on this questions,” the committee suggested,” should be reached before the end of 2010.”

'Explosive stuff'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 10:37 AM - 127 Comments

The parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs has rebuked the CSIS chief over those allegations of foreign interference in Canadian politics and Mr. Fadden is now due to appear before the public safety committee next Monday. Wesley Wark, meanwhile, demands a mea culpa

This is explosive stuff, and it has now blown up in Fadden’s face. The CSIS director should never have gone public with this story in the first place.

To do so endangers the reputation of CSIS, and risks the politicization of the service. No intelligence agency in a democracy can be allowed to be used to make accusations about politicians in office. If such accusations have to be made, they have to be based on credible evidence, exhaustively reviewed, and they have to be made by government ministers or the prime minister.

What they said (IV)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 12, 2010 at 10:58 AM - 0 Comments

On February 1, 2008, a Globe and Mail report tied Asadullah Khalid to allegations of torture. Weeks later, during a visit to Afghanistan, Maxime Bernier stated publicly that Canada would like to see the governor removed, a statement that was then said to set back attempts to remove Khalid. He was ultimately replaced in August 2008.

Herein, a collection of QP exchanges relevant to discussion of governor Khalid. Continue…

The Commons: Weirder still

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 22, 2010 at 5:50 PM - 33 Comments

The Scene. Five days ahead of another of those moments that may determine the ultimate success or failure of Michael Ignatieff’s political career, and on his first appearance in the House after a week spent touring the country to participate in town hall discussions, the Liberal leader stood and asked the government to account for its handling of an organization mandated by Parliament to pursue rather unimpeachable, if perhaps somewhat abstract, goals. An organization, for that matter, that was, up until recently, going about pursuing its rather unimpeachable, if perhaps somewhat abstract, goals with neither fame nor infamy.

The government, he said, had made a scandal of this organization, Rights & Democracy. It had moved last week, he recounted, to block the widow of the former president of Rights & Democracy from testifying at a Parliamentary committee. Would it now, he wondered, allow Mr. Beauregard’s widow, as well as several other interested individuals, from testifying.

That he stood and did all this with his first opportunity speaks to perhaps a number of things, but perhaps none more so than the particular weirdness that continues to define this particular controversy—a weirdness that perhaps demands attention, no matter how innocuous, unimpeachable or abstract whatever else is going on here. Continue…

What scary Conservatives really look like

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 2:03 PM - 33 Comments

The Conservatives held their packed and fun Halloween party on the Hill. One of the best costumes was MP Rob Clarke (centre) seen here with his staff.

MP Candice Hoeppner (right) with her staffer dressed as Liberal MP Hedy Fry.

Tory staffer as NDP MP Linda Duncan’s “campaign manager.”

Continue…

The question of 2011 (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 4:10 PM - 9 Comments

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 Commons: Down the memory hole

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 6:39 PM - 27 Comments

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 Commons: Huzzah, Mr. Ignatieff asks a question that is not entirely rhetorical

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 5, 2009 at 6:45 PM - 33 Comments

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…

Omar Khadr v. Nay Myo Hein

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 2:45 PM - 25 Comments

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.

'I can't believe the Prime Minister didn't know about this'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 53 Comments

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.

'Why am I here?'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 12:18 PM - 0 Comments

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 Commons: And then, suddenly, an answer

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 6:27 PM - 23 Comments

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…

Process/mess

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 1:44 PM - 77 Comments

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 Commons: You bore us, Mr. Ignatieff

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 27, 2009 at 7:10 PM - 31 Comments

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…

Foreign Affairs field trip

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 12:46 AM - 12 Comments

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.

Age is just a number

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 13, 2009 at 11:36 AM - 6 Comments

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.