The Globe looks at the concerns within NATO in late 2006.

A memo obtained by The Globe and Mail shows that in 2006 the federal government was briefed on a lobbying campaign by NATO allies aimed at getting the Kabul government to create stronger safeguards for detainees after prisoner abuses elsewhere. “London, The Hague and Canberra [Australia] are deeply concerned about the absence of solid legal protections for detainees, which – in the age of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib – imperils domestic support for the Afghanistan mission,” said the memo of Dec. 4, 2006, written by diplomat Richard Colvin.

The memo was written after consultation with Catherine Bloodworth, a Foreign Affairs colleague, as well as the military attaché in Canada’s Kabul embassy. It was approved by David Sproule – then Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan – and was e-mailed to dozens of officials at Foreign Affairs, the Privy Council Office and National Defence.

Canadian Press delves into a proposed, but ultimately rejected, plan to put the Afghan army in charge of detainees.

NATO allies lobbied Afghan’s president for a separate legal framework to handle prisoners captured around Kandahar in late 2006 but those efforts “went nowhere,” say internal memos. The records outline an early strategy of the Canadian government as it faced pressure from the International Red Cross and others to take more responsibility for captured Taliban fighters…

The idea was to let the fledgling Afghan army operate a detention facility built by the U.S. rather than rely on either the National Directorate of Security or the country’s shaky correctional system. The proposal included a demand that Afghanistan create a separate legal framework for terror suspects, similar to the U.S. system of military tribunals. Afghan President Hamid Karzai was pressed to carve out “a new detainee policy that would have made the Afghan army responsible for prisoners and created a new class of detainees, but efforts have gone nowhere,” says a Dec. 4, 2006, memo.

Global details the case of a detainee kept in extreme conditions while in Canadian custody and the alleged indifference of Canadian authorities. The Star tries to sort out what our allies were doing and why a separate prison was never constructed. And the Globe depicts a mission sorely lacking in organization.

Mr. Colvin sparked a firestorm at the highest levels in Ottawa when he told a parliamentary committee that he warned for a full year that detainees Canadian troops handed over to Afghan forces faced torture before the government began to monitor them.

But behind that furor is another story: outside the combat-focused military, no one was in charge in the early part of the Afghan mission. A scattered batch of mid-level officials, lacking the incontrovertible proof that Canadians had no means to find, didn’t have the overall responsibility or weight to push for big change. “The buck stopped nowhere,” said one official involved in the Afghan mission.

More memos from 2006, more concerns about Canada’s handling of Afghan detainees.

One of the complainants was British Colonel Dudley Giles, a senior military police officer with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force the 40-plus nation coalition fighting insurgents in Afghanistan. In August of 2006 he brought his concerns to the Canadian embassy in Kabul, saying Canada was stonewalling on providing basic information on the Afghans it was capturing.

“Col. Giles made what can only be described as strong criticisms of the Canadian approach on detainee issues,” Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin wrote in a Sept. 28, 2006, memo that was sent to more than 30 Canadian government e-mail addresses – most of them in the Department of Foreign Affairs.

“There are ‘issues of trust and openness,’ ” Mr. Colvin quoted Col. Giles as saying. “According to Giles, when he contacts Canadian [officials] in Kandahar, ‘their first response to requests is ‘Why do you want to know?’ followed by ‘We know what you want, but we won’t give it to you.’ ” The memos add to the weight of concerns already raised by Mr. Colvin, the International Committee of the Red Cross and human-rights groups about Canada’s practices in transferring prisoners to Afghan authorities.

(Reminder: Tomorrow at 1pm, I’ll be chatting about the year in Parliament.)

A former NATO official steps forward, albeit anonymously.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office used a “6,000-mile screwdriver” to oversee the denial of reports of Afghan detainee abuse when the scandal first erupted in 2007, according to a former senior NATO public affairs official who was then based in Kabul.

The former official, speaking on condition his name not be used, told the Toronto Star that Harper’s office in Ottawa “scripted and fed” the precise wording NATO officials in Kabul used to repudiate allegations of abuse “at a time when it was privately and generally acknowledged in our office that the chances of good treatment at the hands of Afghan security forces were almost zero.”

“It was highly unusual. I was told this was the titanic issue for Prime Minister Harper and that every single statement that went out needed to be cleared by him personally,” said the former official, who is not Canadian.

• Andrew Coyne:
  Hello, everybody. Coyne here. Fire when ready.
• Crusk:
  Hi Andrew. In the past you have argued for a decrease in personal income tax, but why would a decrease in corporate taxes while maintaining high income taxes not be a better answer to productivity and equality concerns?
• Andrew Coyne:
  Well, of course, we could do both. Ultimately, all taxes are paid by people, so whether you cut corporate or personal income taxes is not hugely important — either way, what you want to do is make sure that the tax burden is spread fairly, and spread evenly, with as few exceptions or preferences as possible.
  What I’d really like to see is a rebalancing away from income taxes altogether, in favour of consumption taxes, which are far less damaging to economic activity.
• Critical Reasoning:
  Andrew, what are your thoughts on the Charles and Camilla visit? Do you think there is still a broad base of support for the monarchy in Canada?

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The transcript of Bob Rae’s scrum with reporters after Question Period this afternoon.

Question: A question on Afghanistan.  You want some clarity on Afghanistan.  The government says their position’s clear with regards to the combat mission.  What’s not clear?

Bob Rae: Well, I don’t think the government is telling us what are they planning on doing after 2011 and there was a very – I thought very ambiguous comment made by the Minister saying we’re going to honour the 2008 resolution until we replace it with a new one.  Well, what does that tell you?

You know if you compare what’s going on here and what’s happening in the U.S. and elsewhere, the debate is much less public and much less open and transparent as to what the government is thinking about.  What are the options on the table?  What are the various things that the government might do?  We haven’t heard a word from the government about any of these things and I think we’re – I think the Canadian people are entitled to that.  We know that the discussions are underway inside the American administration.  We have a pretty clear sense of what the options are on that table but we don’t have any idea what the options are on Mr. Harper’s table.

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Still more on what precisely was in Maxime Bernier’s misplaced binder.

Given the importance of the topic during the Bucharest summit, it should come as no surprise that many of the briefing notes dealt with extending membership to Ukraine, Georgia, Croatia, Albania, Macedonia and even Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The government’s strong support for Ukrainian membership is reiterated several times…

Canadian views on Georgia’s hopes to join the alliance, however, were markedly less effusive. While generally supportive, and noting high public support within Georgia for NATO accession, the briefing notes raised some concerns.

Sorry, Georgia.

According to her office, the Governor General has just returned from a day trip to Afghanistan. Her remarks to the troops there are below.

I have been anxiously awaiting this opportunity to come back here, to this country where your mission has brought you.

Particularly given that at this very moment, Afghanistan is going through a pivotal time in its history, as its people struggle to overcome decades of distress and insecurity.

This morning, I had the opportunity to visit the Sayad Pacha School, built in 2008 with Canadian aid, where 520 students, half of whom are girls, attend classes. When I asked those children about their dreams for Afghanistan, without hesitation, they answered: Security. Security to go after their dreams, and education to achieve them.

So it is for these children that you are working. It is for them that we are here and for them that you are giving so selflessly. So that the flame of hope that I saw in their eyes continues to burn. So that these young girls and boys who dream of becoming engineers, doctors, teachers—who told me so with such pride, such confidence, such faith—can thrive as they follow the luminous path of their dreams.

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Canadian Press explains Le Devoir’s scoop for we anglophones.

The misplaced documents that got Maxime Bernier booted from cabinet last year contained a treasure trove of sensitive information, according to a newspaper report today. Details of the documents were revealed in a report by Montreal’s Le Devoir newspaper titled: “A mine of crucial information for the enemy”…

The newspaper says it received heavily redacted copies of the material through the Access to Information Act. Still, in the parts that weren’t blacked out, the newspaper says the documents contain information about — among other things — missile-defence systems, NATO’s expansion to the Balkans, Afghan prisoners, arms control in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the presence of al-Qaeda in Pakistan.