Inquiry or bust

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:33 PM - 31 Comments

Kady O’Malley has all the documents, letters and position papers that may amount to an unprecedented showdown in the coming days over the Afghan detainee documents. The Liberals, meanwhile, offer the government an out, of sorts.

“In terms of the information that we’re seeking from government through the motion in the House, our objective is not to create an impasse with government, our objective is to actually seek disclosure. The government can provide disclosure by way of calling a public inquiry; then there is no question of us demanding disclosure.”

What has changed in Ottawa in two months?

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, March 1, 2010 at 11:28 AM - 121 Comments

Parliament returns, to a changed political landscape. As late as mid-December, the Conservatives were still leading the Liberals by eight to 10 points. Two months and one prorogation later, the parties are statistically tied.

Yet the Conservative lead had begun to slip even before the disastrous decision to prorogue Parliament. At their mid-October peak, in the aftermath of the Liberals’ equally disastrous attempt to force an election, the Tories stood as much as 15 points in front. Prorogation, indeed, was supposed to arrest that decline.

And while the Conservatives may hope to put the prorogation debacle behind them, the fundamental reasons for their four-month tailspin have not changed. One of these is an improved showing by the Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, for whom prorogation has proved something of a gift: a chance to shuck off the persona of the scheming politician he had adopted, in favour of the high-minded wonk within.

Continue…

What they were told, what we aren't allowed to hear

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 1:54 PM - 32 Comments

The Star reports on a May 2007 memo warning government and military officials about the legal ramifications of detainee transfers. James Travers, meanwhile, posits an unsourced, but seemingly somehow informed, theory as to some of what the government is currently withholding.

In the winter of 2007, three insurgents captured by Canada’s top-secret Joint Task Force Two disappeared into the notorious Afghan prison system. Three years later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper suspended Parliament rather than release related documents that raise difficult questions about the role of this country’s special forces and spies in targeting, capturing and interrogating key enemies.

Linking those events are fears about what happened to Isa Mohammad and two other prisoners transferred to Kabul control by Canadians after successful Kandahar operations. In a private 2007 briefing, the prestigious International Committee of the Red Cross expressed concern to Canada that the men had either been killed or were being held by the U.S. in one of its controversial “black site” military prisons.

Dispatches detailing those worries, the names of the three missing men – as well as a fourth who Canadians found – and Red Cross frustration over the military’s persistent failure to provide timely, accurate prisoner information are in the files the Harper government is withholding.

The pivotal paperwork (VI)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 14 Comments

Two months after the government was first asked to explain why a reference to abuse in a 2006 field report was redacted in 2007, but released uncensored in 2009, the questions having been put to three different departments, an answer, of sorts, arrives from the Justice Department.

Those questions, for the record, were as follows: In regards to the redaction noted below, who oversaw, ordered or made that redaction? On what grounds was that reference to abuse redacted? Did those grounds no longer apply when Gen. Natynczyk disclosed the reference to abuse last week?

I reprint the response received this morning here in its entirety. Continue…

Politician, explain thyself

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 2:37 PM - 40 Comments

The Liberal candidate in Dufferin Caledon carefully explains that while he was a “little tired of the Afghan detainee thing” and while he thinks “most Canadians” are probably are okay with a “little torture” at a time of war, he, with all his soul, abhors “the fact that Canadians have been involved with torture to get information from prisoners, who for the most part, are just farmers in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

'A free society requires access to the facts'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 1:33 PM - 17 Comments

In response to an attempt by a government official to save the Canadian Press a few dollars on reprinting costs, Jack Layton attempts to explain the riddle that is access to information.

Meanwhile, NDP Leader Jack Layton highlighted the problems within the federal Access to Information regime by releasing two copies a memo from diplomat Richard Colvin on the subject of Afghan detainees. Only a few words were redacted in the memo as it was publicly released by the Attorney-General to the Military Police Complaints Commission. But, when released by the Department of National Defence under Access to Information legislation, it was redacted almost in its entirety…

“A free society requires access to the facts. That’s fundamental. And the government can’t simply say we are going to protect ourselves by building walls around the truth. That’s not right. And [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper used to say that but then again he used to say a lot of things.”

That memo in its dueling forms can be viewed here and here.

'If he says no then we have contempt of Parliament'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 4:22 PM - 133 Comments

The Canadian Press, Globe, Star, CBC and CTV report from today’s unofficial hearings of the Afghanistan committee. The Star’s Allan Woods wraps the day’s discussion thusly.

Mendes, one of the country’s top constitutional scholars, said Parliament’s power exceeds that of the various national security laws that have been used to censor government memos and diplomatic cables describing who was warned about possible war crimes violations going back to early 2006, when Canadian soldiers moved to Kandahar province.

That leaves MPs with two paths forward: they can ask the Supreme Court of Canada to rule on their right to access the information, a process that could take years; or they can invoke a rarely used power to censure, expel and even imprison any member of the House of Commons for contempt…

Opposition MPs are taking the advice seriously and will decide in the coming weeks how to move ahead.

The war on the civil service

By Nancy Macdonald - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 10:50 AM - 88 Comments

Ever since Stephen Harper anointed Stockwell Day as his cost-cutter-in-chief last week, the Prime Minister’s Office has been going out of its way to highlight the significance of shifting Day to head the Treasury Board in an otherwise ho-hum cabinet shuffle. Said to be among Harper’s favourite ministers, Day is now cast as the PM’s Dr. No—the man to stare down resistance to new austerity measures. As part of Ralph Klein’s cabinet in Alberta back in the nineties, Day pinned a loonie to his lapel (evoking Ayn Rand, who once pinned a gold dollar sign to hers) and oversaw thousands of public-sector layoffs. In Ottawa, a beleaguered public service is paying attention.

Within a week of Day’s swearing-in, 18 federal government unions gathered in Ottawa for a two-day meeting to map out a strategy against the anticipated assault. They expect the Tories’ first target will be the bureaucracy’s famously generous pensions—what Finance Minister Jim Flaherty calls their “handsome arrangements.” Flaherty has ruled out many other options for deflating a bloated deficit. He’s said the Conservatives will never raise taxes or cut transfers to the provinces to balance the books. Instead, they’ll rely on economic growth and if it’s not enough, they’ll cut “other programs.” Up against one of the largest deficits in the country’s history, civil-sector union leaders are girding for a fight.

Continue…

The pivotal paperwork (V)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 12:26 PM - 11 Comments

For the record, these questions remain unanswered. At last report, the buck was resting with the Justice department.

In the mean time, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff has convened a Board of Inquiry to investigate “the specific details of the incident of 14 June 2006″ as well as “the circumstances surrounding the 14 June 2006 incident and the subsequent passage of this information up the chain of command.” The BOI’s report is due February 12.

Past due

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 13 Comments

While Richard Colvin awaits the necessary funds to pay his legal bills, the Liberals have publicly tabled some of the dozens of written questions they had put on the order paper and were awaiting government response when the second session of the 40th Parliament met its untimely demise. Included among them, several on the matter of Afghan detainees. To wit.

Who was responsible for redacting the documents and what role did the DFAIT, National Defence, the Privy Council Office or any ministry play? How many times has the government notified the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) of allegations of abuse, mistreatment, or torture of Canadian-transferred detainees?  Did the government follow-up on these or any other investigation with regards to allegations or evidence of abuse, mistreatment, or torture of Canadian-transferred detainees to ensure that each of the allegations had been investigated?  What were the results of these investigations?  What did the government do to assure itself that the allegations had been sufficiently investigated by the AIHRC or any other entity?  Were any records or files kept on these investigations?   Were any of these investigations deemed to be insufficient and, if so, what was done to remedy this? Did the government ever request legal opinions regarding Canada’s domestic and international legal responsibility for detainees captured by the Canadian military or military police in Afghanistan and transferred to Afghan authorities?  Did this legal advice contribute to the formulation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada’s diplomatic contingency plan related to detainees?

With or without you

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 12:13 PM - 19 Comments

Afghan committee hearings will apparently resume, unofficially, next month.

Layton says the three opposition parties have reached an agreement to continue unofficial committee hearings into that controversy while Parliament is suspended. The first hearing is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 3.

It would seem at least some NDP MPs will be in Ottawa next week. The Liberals have released a rough outline of their plans.

Great moments in Canadian innovation

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 9:30 AM - 85 Comments

Richard Foot reports that in no other similar democracy has a prime minister prorogued Parliament to avoid trouble.

It turns out, no other English-speaking nation with a system of government like ours — not Britain, Australia or New Zealand — has ever had its parliament prorogued in modern times, so that its ruling party could avoid an investigation, or a vote of confidence, by other elected legislators.

Only three times has this happened, all in Canada — first in 1873, when Sir John A. Macdonald asked the governor general to prorogue Parliament in order to halt a House of Commons probe into the Pacific Scandal. Lord Dufferin gave in to the demand, but when Parliament reconvened Macdonald was forced to resign. No prime minister dared use prorogation to such effect again, until Stephen Harper convinced Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean to suspend Parliament in 2008, so the Conservative party could evade a confidence vote. A little more than a year later, he did it again.

What was known (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 5:38 PM - 10 Comments

For the record, the NDP motion passed by the House on the evening of December 1, by a vote of 146-129, called for a “a Public Inquiry into the transfer of detainees in Canadian custody to Afghan authorities from 2001 to 2009.”

And the obvious implication of that time frame did not seem to escape the official opposition. Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae noted then that “the conduct of the previous government will be equally subject to scrutiny as the conduct of the current government.” Speaking to another motion later that month, Michael Ignatieff repeated the his side’s willingness to “examine the whole length of the mission in Afghanistan beginning in 2001 under the previous Liberal government.”

What was known

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 4:04 PM - 80 Comments

The Torch unearths and translates an April 2007 story from La Presse.

Canadian diplomats stationed in Kabul warned the former Liberal government in 2003, 2004 and 2005 that torture was commonplace in Afghan prisons. In spite of these warnings, the Martin government signed an agreement with the Karzai government in December 2005 to hand over all Canadian-captured prisoners to Afghan authorities, Foreign Affairs documents obtained by La Presse reveal.

From 2002 to 2005, the Canadian practice regarding Afghan detainees suspected of Taliban ties was to hand them over to US military authorities. Ottawa decided to shift its transfers to Afghan authorities, however, in response to abuse allegations at the Guantánamo Bay internment center and the controversy that erupted over revelations of torture and degradation at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq ["An Afghan ghost of Abu Ghraib?"].

La Presse likens the documents in its possession to annual report disclosed by the Globe two days earlier. The Prime Minister responded to the Globe’s story that afternoon in Question Period. Here is some of that. Continue…

Not shuffled, merely thrown under the bus

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 1:35 PM - 21 Comments

Senior Conservatives anonymously explain Peter MacKay’s situation.

Senior Conservatives said Mr. MacKay was guilty of “freelancing” when he attacked the credibility of public servant Richard Colvin over his testimony on the detainee issue before a parliamentary committee last fall. Still, moving the Defence Minister would be an admission of defeat by a government that maintains it has done nothing wrong on the file.

The Tories’ team player

By John Geddes - Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 8:12 AM - 12 Comments

Defence Minister Peter MacKay could have left himself more options when it came to handling the Afghan detainee issue. Confronted with Richard Colvin’s explosive Nov. 18 testimony to a House committee—in which the diplomat charged that the government had ignored repeated warnings in 2006 and 2007 that prisoners turned over by Canadian troops to Afghan authorities were tortured—MacKay might have played for time and looked into Colvin’s claims. Instead, the next day, he declared in question period that “there has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian Forces,” and slammed Colvin for trading in “nothing short of hearsay, second- or third-hand information, or that which came directly from the Taliban.”

Tories rallied behind MacKay. His friends and backers said his uncompromising reaction sprang from staunch loyalty to Canadian troops in Afghanistan. (His 2009 Christmas card shows him surrounded by soldiers in camouflage.) But his unambiguous rebuke of a serving Foreign Affairs official proved hard to sustain. MacKay’s assertion that no transferred detainee was known to have been abused was demolished on Dec. 9, when Chief of the Defence Staff Walt Natynczyk admitted that Canadian soldiers grabbed back a prisoner they had turned over to Afghan police in 2006 after he was badly beaten. Then Colvin delivered a letter to the House committee on Afghanistan on Dec. 16, detailing how he’d gathered and reported information on Afghan torture—rendering MacKay’s portrayal of him as a Taliban dupe implausible.

For most cabinet ministers, these setbacks on the biggest controversy of the parliamentary session would have inflicted severe career damage. But MacKay is no ordinary minister, so how seriously he’s been hurt, if at all, remains a matter of debate. He draws on a deep reservoir of personal, family, and regional loyalties inside his party. Even Conservatives without those bonds to him tend to view MacKay, 44, as one of the few plausible Harper successors. And beyond the party ranks, his name and face are recognized as much for his high-profile bachelorhood—including his romance with Belinda Stronach—as for his high-stakes political gambles.

Continue…

'That's not the question'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 4:01 PM - 96 Comments

The text of Peter Mansbridge’s questions and the Prime Minister’s responses on the matter of Afghan detainees and what, if anything, that matter had to do with the proroguing of Parliament.

Mansbridge. What do you say to those, outside of the political process, who look at what’s happened here, second time in a year, different circumstances in both cases, but the argument being made by many, I mean, you know you can’t pick up a story on this issue, without somebody referring to the Afghan detainee issue, saying that that’s really the reason, you and your government wanted to stop the investigative work of the committee.

Harper. I think polls have been pretty clear, Peter, that that’s not on the top of the radar of most Canadians.

Mansbridge. No, but that’s not the question.

Continue…

New edition

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 3:43 PM - 0 Comments

The Colvin Encyclopedia is now fully updated. Meanwhile, in an op-ed yesterday, Eugene Lang and Eric Morse doubled down and called for an inquiry into the entire Afghanistan mission.

What Canada really does need to come out of this affair is a hard, serious look at how this country goes to war, and how it then conducts its statecraft during war. Rather than a narrow Colvin inquiry, we need a broad structural investigation — perhaps even a Royal Commission — into the management, mechanics, processes and structures of Canada’s governmental institutions in times of war.

We have pretended for too long that Canadians simply never go to war. But we are in one now, and there is a good chance that before the first quarter of the 21st century ends, we will be in one again. Unpreparedness for war may fit the patterns of our history all too well, but that is no excuse before our allies, our prisoners or our dead.

The pivotal paperwork (IV)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 1:55 PM - 13 Comments

After a week without explanation as to why a reference to abuse was redacted from that 2006 field report when it was originally released in 2007, three specific questions were registered last Friday with the offices of Defence Minister Peter MacKay and General Walter Natynczyk.

In regards to the redaction noted below, who oversaw, ordered or made that redaction? On what grounds was that reference to abuse redacted? Did those grounds no longer apply when Gen. Natynczyk disclosed the reference to abuse last week?

Minister MacKay’s office forwarded those questions to the Justice Department, the department responsible for overseeing redactions. No response has yet been received, but it will be posted here when it is.

Cameramen not apparently entitled to enjoy holiday season with friends, family

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 23, 2009 at 12:06 AM - 36 Comments

The Canadian Press, Sun, Star, CBC and Canwest report from today’s unofficial meeting of the Afghanistan committee. In photos, the Sun documents the exit of a cameraman apparently sent by the Conservative side to observe the proceedings on behalf of those government MPs who couldn’t be there.

Happy holidays (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 21, 2009 at 9:23 PM - 8 Comments

Four years ago tomorrow, Stephen Harper made a campaign stop in Winnipeg, where he outlined his party’s vision for arctic sovereignty. The next day he had a photo op at a Toys R Us in Calgary. He then took three days off for Christmas, before resuming his campaign on Dec. 27.

After the jump, a CP dispatch from Dec. 19, 2005, explaining the Mr. Harper’s schedule for the 2005 holidays. Continue…

Happy holidays

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 21, 2009 at 5:02 PM - 23 Comments

Laurie Hawn writes to inform the Afghanistan committee that Conservative members won’t be attending tomorrow’s meeting. It appears the committee will carry on without them. Meanwhile, Tim Naumetz of the Hill Times obtains classified transcripts from the Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry.

Maj. Kevin Rowcliffe, then a staff adviser to Lt.- Gen. Michel Gauthier, second in command of the Afghanistan mission under Mr. Hillier, was concerned even in early stages of the Afghanistan mission of the potential for torture abuse and expressed concern at the very top that Canadians were transferring detainees to Afghan police and intelligence forces “not knowing what happens to them after they’re handed over.”

Maj. Rowcliffe and two other Military Police officers who were interviewed for the Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry revealed a state of “mass confusion” over transfers, scarce resources for military police in Kandahar and concern from the police themselves over the way generals in Ottawa, under pressure from the government, were handling the detainee controversy as it later made front-page news in Canada and burst onto the House of Commons floor.

Parliament will fight

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, December 21, 2009 at 12:10 PM - 263 Comments

We are not yet in a constitutional crisis over the government’s refusal to release the Colvin memos to Parliament, but we probably should be. A secretive and overbearing government has turned an ordinary political dispute into an extraordinary confrontation over the powers and privileges of Parliament. Unless some compromise is found, Parliament will fight, and Parliament will be right.

What began as a manageable controversy over the Harper government’s faltering attempts to deal with a problem it inherited from the Liberals—what to do with the prisoners our forces captured in Afghanistan—has been transformed, via the Conservatives’ reflexive paranoia and insularity, into a full-blown political debacle, complete with martyred whistle-blower, outraged former ambassadors, self-correcting generals, and befuddled ministers. And running throughout, a drumbeat of press reports contradicting virtually every aspect of the government’s story.

It now appears, contrary to the government’s repeated assurances, that at least some of the prisoners we transferred to the Afghan police and security services were tortured, or at least abused; that at least some of our troops knew this; and that serious concerns about the treatment of these prisoners, and about our own procedures for reporting on their whereabouts, were relayed to government and Defence officials, not only from Richard Colvin, the diplomat at the centre of the storm, but from multiple sources. Continue…

Pretty please

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 18, 2009 at 5:10 PM - 15 Comments

The opposition requested a meeting of the special committee on Afghanistan for next Tuesday and that meeting is apparently now scheduled. The Liberals humbly ask that Rick Casson, the Conservative chair of the committee, deign to preside over said meeting.