While Canada Wept

By Andrew Potter - Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 10:28 AM - 4 Comments

Sometimes a press release is worth a thousand op-eds. Herewith revealed, the essential fecklessness of Canada’s attempts at conducting foreign affairs. All that seems to have been left out is the part where Rasmussen looks at Cannon and goes, “‘and you are…?”

Minister Cannon meets NATO’s Secretary General Rasmussen

December 3, 2009 – NATO, Brussels

Minister Cannon met with NATO’s Secretary General Rasmussen today. Many topics were discussed during the meeting, including the situation in Afghanistan following President Obama’s announcement on troop reinforcement.

They agreed that 2010 would be an important transition year for Afghanistan and looked forward to the conference on Afghanistan to be held in London in January 2010.

The Secretary General expressed his appreciation for the Canadian contribution in Afghanistan, saying “Canada is making a difference”.

They also discussed NATO-Russia relations as well as Canada’s firm commitment and clear plans in affirming its Arctic sovereignty.

The Secretary General noted he was looking forward to visiting Canada early in the new year.

Important context to come

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 4:33 PM - 16 Comments

Unsolicited, a three paragraph statement from Foreign Affairs arrived just now.

It is important to let the Parliamentary Committee process unfold and to consider and weigh the testimony of subsequent witnesses before drawing any conclusions about how events in Afghanistan may have unfolded in 2006 and 2007.

It is our understanding that other current and former DFAIT employees will be testifying before the Parliamentary Committee. Their testimony will provide important context and information about this issue.

Canada has a robust monitoring regime for Canadian transferred detainees in place. From the beginning of our engagement in Kandahar in 2005, Canada has taken steps with the Afghan government to ensure that Afghanistan meets its domestic and international obligations with respect to the treatment of detainees.

Plausible deniability

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 9:12 AM - 12 Comments

Murray Brewster delves further into this government’s handling of Afghan detainees.

Canadian diplomats in Afghanistan were ordered in 2007 to hold back information in their reports to Ottawa about the handling of the prisoners, say defence and foreign affairs sources.

… There was a fear that graphic reports, even in censored form, could be uncovered by opposition parties and the media through access-to-information laws, leading to revelations that would further erode already-tenuous public support.

The controversy was seen as “detracting from the narrative” the Harper government was trying to weave around the mission, said one official. “It was meant to put on happy face,” he added.

Paikin v. Martin

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 3:32 PM - 6 Comments

The former prime minister sits down with Steve Paikin to discuss the G20, the global economy and Africa.

'A negotiated release of the hostages was preferable to just about every other conceivable option'

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 2:10 AM - 59 Comments

With confirmation that four al-Qaeda prisoners and several million dollars were exchanged for Canadian diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, here again is the transcript from the Prime Minister’s press conference on the afternoon of April 22, announcing Fowler and Guay’s release.

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Bill’s backstage moments

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 12:55 PM - 0 Comments

Journalists write the first draft of history. Bill Clinton provided the second—and subsequent revisions—with his 957-page autobiography, My Life, in 2004. Now we get the footnotes.

Taylor Branch’s thick new book, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, is the product of more than 80 free-form conversations the Pulitzer-prize-winning author recorded with the former U.S. commander-in-chief during his eight years in office. Intimate, often late-night bull sessions between two old friends (Clinton, Branch and Hillary all worked together on George McGovern’s 1972 Democratic campaign), the semi-regular chats were an effort to capture the details of White House deliberations, crises and victories while they were still fresh. Not so much the period’s great events, as its backstage moments. Continue…

To the world beyond our borders

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 18, 2009 at 12:43 PM - 12 Comments

Shauna Sylvester reflects on Michael Ignatieff’s speech in Ottawa this week.

Some might argue that a speech at the Canadian Club does not a platform make, and they may be right. But when was the last time we heard a national political party leader use a major speech to address global issues? Even during the worst global economic recession in decades, all speeches were domestically focused.

I know that every Poli Sci 101 course says that “elections are always won on domestic issues,” but I’m not convinced – if no global issues are raised, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. What I have noticed, is that fewer Canadians are going to the polling stations, especially younger Canadians. While the reasons for this are complex, I think every political party should be looking at how they can speak to more Canadians. Given that Canadians are focused more globally than their government, perhaps it’s time for federal political parties to wake up and see the world.

'It doesn't seem important. It is.'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 14, 2009 at 12:40 PM - 44 Comments

The prepared text of Michael Ignatieff’s speech to the Canadian Club this afternoon.

I’m here today to talk to you about Canada’s place in the world—how we’ve lost it and how we can get it back.

The world is changing, and Canada has to change with it.  Our identity as a people will be defined by the place we find in the world that is taking shape on the other side of this global recession.

Canada was born inside two Empires, the French, the British, and we have matured beside the most powerful nation in history, the United States.

What happens to our identity, our place in the world, when the centre of gravity shifts to Asia? When India and China become the powerhouses of the global economy?

We should have nothing to fear from the rise of these new powers. A new world creates new opportunities for Canada. Opportunities to trade, to learn, and to create the global architecture of security for this emerging new world. But only if we have leadership that seizes these opportunities.

Ce que nous faisons à l’étranger contribue à nous définir. C’est le reflet de notre personnalité. C’est le reflet de ce que nous pouvons apporter au monde pour qu’il soit meilleur. C’est le prolongement de ce que nous sommes comme peuple.

By and large, Canadian politicians scarcely utter a word about Canada in the world on the hustings.  It doesn’t seem important. It is.

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'A regrettable use'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 31, 2009 at 12:16 PM - 16 Comments

Foreign Affairs objects to the CIA’s use of Transport Canada research in designing interrogation methods.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs department says it’s aware of reports that Transport Canada material has been used by the CIA. ”This is a regrettable use of a publicly available document intended to save lives,” the department said in a statement to CBC News.

Mind you, the Canadian government’s official position is—or at least was, at last check—that the United States did not participate in torture.

Forgiveness

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:18 PM - 8 Comments

Glen Pearson reflects on Suaad Hagi Mohamud’s appearance at the foreign affairs committee yesterday.

Key people investigating the incident have determined that Ms. Mohamud did absolutely nothing wrong. It was, in fact, her government that had failed her … miserably. There is an investigation under way, yet it is happening specifically because she was innocent. Guilt on her part is not an issue here, but even with that the Government cannot bring itself to apologize. All three opposition parties offered heartfelt apologies. And some of the Government members expressed sorrow at what had happened to her.  But clearly they had been given direction to not apologize for the incident. You could see the struggle in their own eyes and I could tell easily that a couple of them wanted to offer their apologies. But they didn’t and that is just a symbol of much that is wrong at the moment.

A lone woman, a citizen of Canada, telling her story as only she could. It was drama in every sense of the word. In the end, however, the drama was eclipsed by the sobering reality that this could happen to any of us, or our children. There have been too many such incidents of late and people are having trouble believing us when we say we will protect their rights overseas. Something’s not right and the system needs to be fixed. I just don’t know how we can take the next step when a government cannot bring itself to admit its own series of blunders. Ms. Mohamud needs and deserves an apology. We in Parliament need to ask for forgiveness.

The suspense is killing us: Liveblogging Foreign Affairs on Canadians abroad. (Maybe.)

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 2:25 PM - 67 Comments

Disclaimer: As noted (read: ranted about) earlier,  ITQ has no idea how this particular SO 106(4)-driven emergency committee meeting is going to unfold — or, for that matter, if it’s even going to happen — today, or ever.  But that’s not going to stop her from showing up to liveblog whatever does end up going down this afternoon in 237-C, so check back at 2:45 or so for a pre-meeting scrum with NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar. (He’ll tell us what’s going on, right? )
UPDATE: Okay, we’ve got the name of one potential witness, at least: ITQ has been told that Suaad Mohamud is in Ottawa, and ready to testify if invited to do so by the committee.

2:32:19 PM
Greetings, fans of justice for Canadians stranded abroad, foes of capriciously in camera-fied meetings and random parliamentary tour groups!
After securing the coveted corner seat in the soon-to-be-temporarily-locked-down committee room, ITQ has joined the stakeout by the Reading Room, which is conveniently located just across the Hall of Honour from the giftshop.

We’re all eagerly awaiting the arrival of NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar, who wants to use this meeting as a springboard to a much more extensive investigation into this government’s treatment of Canadians who run into trouble abroad, from Omar Khadr to Suaad Mohamud and plenty more in between. In the meantime, though, we’re trading tidbits on potential witnesses: apparently, the Liberals want to call a whole whack of bureaucrats, from the president of the Canada Border Services Agency to the deputy minister at Foreign Affairs, as well as Mohamud, as previously noted, and a handful of others. Whether the other opposition parties are willing to back their play on that one, well — we’re just going to have to see what happens at this afternoon’s meeting.
Holding a spontaneous picket of the leader of the party you hope to keep as an ally strikes ITQ as a potentially risky strategy, however.

2:44:06 PM
Dewar is here, and he’s explaining what he wants to do — convince the committee to “work together” (drink!) to come up with a protocol for handling cases that arise in future. He does sound like he’s willing to meet the Liberals halfway, at least, on the witnesses tentatively scheduled for today, though. “We have a government that needs to be held to account,” he notes, as far as its obligation to protect citizens abroad — and it looks like it’s going to require a law to make that happen.

2:49:22 PM
This was a very smart move by Dewar — he’s got a captive audience out here, and he’s taking full advantage of it. I’ve not seen any other MPs yet, but I’m sure they’ll turn up soon — that, or they’ve slipped in the backdoor. Honestly, we need fewer egresses in this place.
2:53:46 PM
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UPDATED: 106(4)Watch: Hey, you know what else drives ITQ stark, staring bonkers?

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 10:43 AM - 31 Comments

UPDATE: Okay, we’ve got the name of one potential witness, at least: ITQ has been told that Suaad Mohamud is in Ottawa, and ready to testify if invited to do so by the committee.

—

When she can’t get a copy of the proposed witness list for an emergency committee meeting that is supposed to take place in a few hours.

Honestly, y’all, ITQ understands that the clerk can’t put out the official agenda until after the members have voted on the 106(4) motion — although somehow, the Natural Resources committee managed to do exactly that in advance of last Friday’s meeting, which was a welcome, if unexpected development. Really, though, is there any reason why the four (or more) members who sign off on a 106(4) request couldn’t at least give us some idea of which witnesses made it onto their respective wish lists?  Or better yet, but even less likely still, make the preliminary meeting – at which the motion is passed, and the list of witnesses finalized — public instead of holding it in camera.

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Convene one emergency committee meeting, get the second one free – and we'll throw in an ITQ poll too!

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 10:50 AM - 20 Comments

Hey, remember last Friday, when ITQ was rambling on about all those possible emergency committee meetings that the opposition parties were hoping to 106(4) into existence? Well, turns out she wasn’t suffering from end-of-August delirium: both Foreign Affairs and Agriculture will be back in business later this week , dealing with motions to “study the treatment of Canadians abroad by the Government of Canada”  and “[hold] a meeting on the Report of the Independent Investigator into the 2008 Listeriosis Outbreak, and the Government’s response,” respectively.

The catch? According to the schedule, the two meetings will be happening at the exact same time, which means that ITQ has to decide which one deserves full liveblogging coverage, and which one she can catch in reruns on CPAC. She’s currently leaning towards Foreign Affairs, which seems to hold far more potential for drama, particularly if the opposition can come up with a decent witness list, but she’s willing to entertain arguments in favour of the Aggies too.  (And no, she doesn’t promise to be bound by the results of the following poll, but it will definitely be taken into account when she makes her final decision.)

What the heck is going on in Kenya?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 1:53 PM - 46 Comments

Another twist in the bizarre tale of Suaad Hagi Mohamud. Gar Pardy would like to know where the ministers are.

“You would think they would bloody well have made sure their judgment was based on something more than thick lips,” he said. “The ministers should be insisting on a proper investigation. Ministers have been getting a free ride. They are more and more sliding away from direct responsibilities when things go wrong. If ministers aren’t responsible, then nobody is responsible.”

When Mohamud’s lawyer pleaded her case to federal court, the Tories refused to comment because the case of mistaken identity was now a legal matter. One of the few remarks came from Cannon, who said she would have to try harder to prove that she was the person pictured in the passport.

Let us storm the beaches of Sudan, Iran and Guantanamo

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 11:13 AM - 10 Comments

Apropos of all sorts of things, here is Stephen Harper’s answer to a National Post questionnaire in 2004 that asked “What have we learned from the William Sampson affair?”

Stephen Harper, Canadian Alliance: “We’ve learned that “soft power” doesn’t work when dealing with regimes that only understand hard power. Liberals cling to this doctrine, but in practice it has failed time and again. The highest duty of government is the protection of its citizens. Canada must ensure consequences when foreign governments torture or kill our people.”

'The facts … do not support such an inference'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 10:22 PM - 12 Comments

An official response from foreign affairs to the Globe’s latest report on Abousfian Abdelrazik’s exile.

The inference drawn in today’s Globe and Mail article is not supportable and is in fact irresponsible. There was no such offer, as was suggested in the reporter’s questions. Despite DFAIT’s unequivocal statement to that effect in our response to the Globe and Mail reporter, this conjecture was reported as fact.

We reject the premise of the reporter’s question and the inferences he drew in the subsequent article.

Furthermore,  the facts of this case do not support such an inference. Mr Abdelrazik was released from custody in Sudan in July 2006, despite his inability to return to Canada at that time.

Following his release, he lived openly and at large in Sudan with his family, during which time he remarried and had a child.

'Restate our position'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 12:48 AM - 10 Comments

Paul Koring delves deeper into the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik.

The Harper government was warned shortly after it came to office in 2006 that Sudan’s notorious military intelligence agency was ready to “disappear” Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen, unless Ottawa allowed him to go home, The Globe and Mail has learned. Sudan wanted to “deal with this case for once and for all: we judge as significant their verbal reference to a ‘permanent solution,’” Ottawa was bluntly told by Canadian diplomats in the Sudanese capital, according to documents now in possession of The Globe.

Instead of protesting the threat or warning Sudan – a regime notorious for its human rights abuses – that Ottawa would hold it responsible if harm came to a Canadian citizen held in one of its prisons, diplomats in Khartoum were ordered by a senior Canadian intelligence official to deliver a non-committal response “notwithstanding the expected displeasure of the Sudanese.”

Paging Ari Fleischer

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 17, 2009 at 10:09 AM - 18 Comments

Glen Pearson talks to Jeffrey Sachs.

Since he travels to 40-50 countries a year, I naturally asked him how Canada was viewed from an international perspective. His comments were insightful … and troubling:

• your country has lost its distinctive voice
• Canada should be the conscience of the continent, but instead we’re just a business partner
• his discussions with many world leaders revealed that Canada had lost its presence – the legacy of Lester Pearson is no more
• Canada has lost its brand
• leaders in Canada have become so enamored with financial markets that they have denied this country’s own historical DNA that saw it as a beacon of peace to the world

He always seemed to prefer Lester B. Pearson to Langevin

By kadyomalley - Monday, March 9, 2009 at 2:46 PM - 8 Comments

What can we say? ITQ just can’t resist the opportunity to liveblog a former prime minister even when there aren’t mysterious payments from shadowy arms-dealers-turned-pasta-lobbyists involved.

3:26:15 PM
Greetings from West Block, home of the Foreign Affairs committee, and before today’s meeting gets underway, ITQ would like to send out a big Happy Commonwealth Day to all Her Majesty’s loyal subjects out there. Actually, as it turns out, so would committee chair Kevin Sorenson, who probably wasn’t nearly as oblivious as ITQ and knew what day it was before spotting the Union Jack flapping proudly from a Centre Block flagposts.

Anyway, that’s enough of my rambling, because the first panel of witnesses is up – Donald McCrae, Stephen Clarkson and Carl Grenier.

3:29:04 PM
Professor Clarkson gets things started with his opening statement, which begins, frankly, on a bit of a downer:

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Canada? Still back. Omar Khadr? He'll get back to you: Liveblogging Lawrence Cannon at Foreign Affairs

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 2:36 PM - 19 Comments

Okay, so I know I promised I’d atone for missing the committee debut of Environment and Sustainable Development Commissioner this morning – although really, I’d suggest that sitting through that Finance committee, not to mention Government Ops was more than penance enough for any liveblogger – but I realized that I should probably at least try to cover as many ministerial appearances as possible without chopping myself into infinite berrywielding bits, Sorcerer’s Apprentice-style.

As a result, I will be heading over to West Block to watch Lawrence Cannon in all his practically-deputy-prime-ministerial glory, where I suspect he will be answering many, many questions about Omar Khadr. (And now you know why, out of all the ministers up for grabs this afternoon, I settled on him.)

3:17:45 PM
Wow, looks like I got here just in time as far as getting a seat – the spectator section is pretty much full, and there are only two chairs reserved for the media, of which I am currently occupying one.

I think these supplementary estimates hearings are probably a bigger deal for departmental officials than for the ministers, really; that’s why there are so many tensely scrunched faces in the audience today.

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Fun with media relations

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 1:01 PM - 4 Comments

Here’s an interesting question: Why is it that when the office of Lawrence Cannon, the minister of foreign affairs, sends an email to journalists telling them that Cannon will be meeting with Tooryalai Wesa, the new governor of Kandahar province, and when another journalist, i.e. this one, calls Foreign Affairs, the department Cannon allegedly runs, the media relations folks refuse to answer any questions about the visit or even confirm that it is taking place? All this, it should be pointed out, while the governor was meeting with Cannon elsewhere in the same building.

Please go away

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 9:00 AM - 12 Comments

Peter MacKay’s vow to seek justice for a tortured and murdered Canadian was decisive and explicitly clear. “Mark my words,” he said as minister of foreign affairs in June 2006. “This individual is on notice. If there is any way Canada can bring this person to justice, we’ll do it.”

The individual supposedly on notice was Saeed Mortazavi, the prosecutor general of Tehran. Mortazavi supervised and may have taken part in the violent interrogations of Canadian Zahra Kazemi, who, in 2003, was arrested for taking photographs of a vigil outside Tehran’s Evin prison, where most Iranian political prisoners are held. She was tortured and brutally raped while in custody, and died of her injuries. No one in Iran has ever been convicted for the murder. But upon hearing that Mortazavi would be part of Iran’s delegation to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, MacKay asked German authorities to arrest Mortazavi if he stopped in Germany. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada had requested Mortazavi be detained so he could be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.” Continue…

Megapundit: Begin the thawing of Paul Martin

By selley - Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 2:40 PM - 3 Comments

Must-reads: Jeffrey Simpson on Canada’s place in the world; Don Martin on neglecting Alberta; Greg Weston on Stephen Harper’s RCMP detail; Dan Gardner on cap-and-trade vs. carbon tax; Rosie DiManno on Sarah Palin.

It’s the economy, Mr. Dion
To hell with carbon emissions, the pundits declare, as their stock portfolios emit a descending slide-whistle sound effect.

This campaign is quickly shaping up to be about the economy first and everything else last, Chantal Hébert writes in the Toronto Star. Thus, she argues—apparently in earnest—”if the Liberals were serious about reversing the tide of the election campaign,” they would rubbish the “original game plan,” send Bob Rae and the lingering stench of his term of Ontario premier back to Rosedale and “pull Paul Martin from obscurity.” Not the Paul Martin who’s the “failed prime minister,” you understand—he can stay retired—but the Paul Martin who’s “the most successful finance minister of his political generation.” We’re sure Canadians, and especially the opposition parties, would respect the distinction.

“Canadians now face the worst of worlds,” Thomas Walkom intones, also in the Star: “stubbornly high retail gas prices (bad for consumers); declining wholesale oil prices (bad for Alberta) and a dollar that, while falling against Asian and European currencies, is still high relative to its American counterpart (bad for Ontario).” And that’s before world financial markets go pear-shaped, he notes, which they may well in the near future. What we need in these uncertain times is “a government willing to use the levers of the state (including, but not limited to, deficit financing) to shelter Canadians from the destructive savagery of capitalism’s dark side,” Walkom concludes. Instead, we have Harper’s “blithe” approach, which is, he says, “singularly unnerving.”

The issue of whether to tax carbon and/or energy consumption and cut taxes elsewhere to compensate or to institute a cap-and-trade system “shouldn’t be cast as [a] left versus right” issue, Dan Gardner writes in the Ottawa Citizen, but rather, according to Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw, as “experts versus laypeople.” So why does Stephen Harper, with his master’s degree in economics, find himself amongst the latter? Politics, says Gardner—the same reason, incidentally, that Dion’s Green Shift exempts gasoline. The consumer foots the bill under either system, he explains, but carbon taxation is much more efficient at properly allocating the costs. The sole advantage of cap-and-trade schemes, meanwhile, is that gas stations don’t advertise the direct cost to the consumer on giant signposts.

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This doesn’t bode well for the YPF World Tour

By kadyomalley - Friday, August 8, 2008 at 11:11 AM - 0 Comments

After what happened last weekend in Surrey, it’s not hard to see why the Conservatives would want to retreat to less perilous pandering grounds: taxpayer dollars and naughty words. A classic combination – all this story needs is a gloatbyte from Charles McVety, and it’s C-10 all over again:

Ottawa axes arts travel program

Tories say funds going to programs that would ‘raise the eyebrows of any typical Canadian’

David Akin,  Canwest News Service

Published: Thursday, August 07, 2008

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