Previously, polling company Harris Decima had released poll results demonstrating that a majority of Canadians believed Richard Colvin’s testimony about the likelihood of Canadian detainees in Afghanistan being handed over for torture, despite the government’s rebuttal. Some people dismissed that poll, saying that it had come out prior to testimony by key witnesses like Rick Hillier and David Mulroney (which, to some degree, missed the point as the respondents were expressing their agreement with Colvin, not the government, which had had ample time to respond).

Well, polling company Ekos has a fresh poll out that was conducted between December 2-8, after Hillier, Mulroney, and various other high level officials testified in front of the House of Commons committee (save Peter McKay himself, who spoke yesterday), showing that,

A clear majority of Canadians believe that Canadian Forces handed off prisoners with the knowledge that they might be subject to torture (61% nationally and over 70% outside of CPC supporters). Of that, the vast majority (83%) believe that transferred prisoners were undoubtedly subjected to torture.

Graphs below the jump… [Read more →]

I must say, I’ve been really quite impressed with the work that Liberal National Defence Critic Ujjal Dosanjh has been churning out on the Canadian Afghan detainee transfer scandal. All too often, National Defence flies under the radar in Canadian politics, as we just don’t exert enough influence on the world stage to make Canada’s military posturing/decision-making particularly riveting both inside and outside the country. But this whole transfer scandal has really been cut from the juiciest cloth of political intrigue.

It seems pretty important both for Canada as a country and important in the issue’s own right that we pay attention and hold the Harper government to account for both its potential involvement in handing detainees over for torture  (or least knowing that this was a possibility and failing to do anything satisfactory to  address the situation) and for, frankly, an egregiously secretive and obstructionist response to the allegations once they surfaced. My own relatively moderate perspective on Harper et al. has been utterly blown out of the water on this issue and so I appreciate the consistent jabbing that the Opposition parties in general and Dosanjh in particular have been throwing on this issue (the Liberal Party’s responsibility for getting us into the mess of Afghanistan — for which, to be fair, Dosanjh was not present in any elected capacity — notwithstanding).

Dosanjh’s latest “ethical leaking” move via Twitter has garnered some attention, but it is at the end of the day a media stunt that won’t likely come to much. But for all its seeming recklessness, the gutsy-ness of the move speaks well of Dosanjh’s character and a chutzpah that is sorely needed in Canadian politics. One of the primary things you hear about Canadians is how polite we are, be it in matters of social grace or parliamentary inquiry. And yet I think deep down, Canadians yearn for a political figure who isn’t afraid to bloody noses when the situation calls for it. Such a willingness speaks to the mettle of some of Canada’s favourite political personages: Tommy Douglas, Pierre Trudeau, and, reaching back a ways, the original Canadian bad-ass, William Lyon MacKenzie.

I’m not comparing Ujjal Dosanjh to the likes of Douglas or Trudeau per se, but his demonstrated willingness to keep firing at the Harper Government by any means necessary (even the NDP, Canada’s so-called political black sheep, is backing away from Dosanjh’s proposal in its bid to tack towards the centre and be seen as “respectable”)  is from that same vein of political courage and ferocity. So more than anything, I’m all for that kind of pugilism and urge Dosanjh to keep at it.

Not the least of which because it has become increasingly evident that just these types of tactics have become necessary. [Read more →]

So it should be clear at this point that my focus for the next little bit is going to be trained fairly exclusively on the Canadian Afghan detainee transfer debate ongoing north of the border. The latest twist(s) to the story is that today some heavy hitting witnesses are set to testify in front of the House of Commons committee, including former Chief of Defence Rick Hillier, who has claimed from the get go that “no smoking gun” around Colvin’s allegations ever caught his attention, and current Canadian Ambassador to China and former   Director of the Canadian Afghanitan Task Force David Mulroney, who was specifically named by Colvin as someone who told him to tamp down on his memos.

Both testimonies will be valuable in the process regardless of whether one believes that a public inquiry is necessary or not. At the end of the day what is needed in this situation is more information and as much of it as possible. So while I understand the Opposition parties’ reluctance to cross-examine Mulroney without any of the documentation they’ve requested, I think they are making a strategic mistake by trying to delay his testimony. As a panelist on my new favourite Canadian politics show, Power and Politics with Evan Solomon, noted (sorry, can’t remember which one) if Mulroney is allowed to testify, so much the better for the information received. If, upon reviewing documents released by the government, the Committee is forced to call him back based on a discrepancy, well the Opposition wins there too.

The whole issue around the release of documents pertaining to the issue in question is another area on it’s own, though, that I find the Harper government’s tactics troubling. As reported by Aaron Wherry at MacLeans, Harper and Defence Minister Peter McKay keep saying that they will provide the Committee with all documents they are legally required to submit. That word, legally, has been sticking in a lot of craws and mine is no different.

Technically speaking, that is the correct answer. But what would have been a better answer would have been to say we will provide whatever information it is within our power to provide to clear up any allegations or misunderstandings of wrong doing. The way I read Harper and McKay’s (and by extension, the government’s) response is to say basically: we will do the bare minimum that is required of us to deal with this issue and only because we are legally required to do so. If anyone is wondering why I’ve personally been moved to the belief that a public inquiry is necessary, well, there it is. [Read more →]

Last Friday, I wrote a post about the Afghan detainee transfer scandal that is currently gripping Canadian politics and allegations that Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian government were complicit in handing over detainees into conditions in which torture of those detainees by Afghan authorities was likely from former senior diplomat to Afghanistan Richard Colvin.

Since I wrote that post, former Chief of Defense and high profile Canadian Rick Hillier has claimed that Colvin’s memos and concerns didn’t raise any flags for him, saying, “[t]he guy said some things and, really, nothing ever caught my attention based on what he perceived he said or perceived he sent[.]” Additionally, the federal government has come out and said that it halted detainee transfer on three separate occasions in 2009 due to concerns over prisoner treatment and access to facilities. And now, a high-level federal bureaucrat who used to run the government’s Afghanistan Task Force, David Mulroney, is set to rebuff the charges.

On the other side of the coin, recently surfaced documents support Colvin’s claims that Canadian officials have been slow in alerting the Red Cross to prisoner transfers and today Amnesty International has issued a call for a full public inquiry into the matter (video from a reporter who attended the press release here).

My own thoughts are that the waters have been muddied enough and that the allegations are of a serious enough nature that the only responsible thing to do is to coordinate a full public inquiry. In my original post and in other posts at the League I have lamented the state of Canadians’ interest in their own politics and talked about the need for, lacking a better phrase, a grassroots resurgence of civil and political engagement by Canadians from across the spectrum. Given how important this issue is and how much its potential ramifications concern me, I have decided that now is the time for me to put my money where my mouth is and lead by example. [Read more →]

I’m a little stunned at how dismissively and cavalierly the Conservative government of Canada is handling the current Afghan detainee scandal it has on its hands. Though, upon reflection, I probably shouldn’t be.

On Wednesday, former senior Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin testified in front of a House Commons committee saying that it was his opinion that, and I quote,

According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured. For interrogators in Kandahar, it was a standard operating procedure.

Colvin was testifying in regards to the multiple year inquiry into the complicity of the Canadian government and Canadian Armed Forces in delivering Afghan detainees into environments run by Afghan forces that likely involved torture of those detainees. The government is responding to Colvin’s claims by questioning Colvin’s credibility and calling his claims unsubstantiated. I quote Defense Minister Peter McKay,

There has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian forces.

The CBC further reports that, “Conservative MPs dismissed Colvin’s testimony as being based on second- and third-hand information and suggested his allegations were part of a disinformation campaign.”

These kinds of tactics are all too familiar for Canada’s Conservative government. It seems like any time any concern is raised, the inevitable response from Harper et al is to wave it off as obvious partisan politicking from the Opposition parties that is hardly worth government’s time. And, to be certain, there is an element of truth to that hand waving some of the time, this is, afterall, politics.

But Colvin’s claims are serious and Colvin himself is hardly a source lacking credibility, contra McKay, neither is he part of the Opposition. I mean, not only was he a senior diplomat in Kandahar, but Colvin is currently First Secretary and Liaison Officer in the Intelligence Liaison Office of the Embassy of Canada in Washington. Titles aside, the point is that Colvin has a pretty distinguished career of service to the country at a pretty high level and he ought not to be written off like some inconvenient nut off the street.

That remains especially true given that there are reasonable questions about how government has acted towards Colvin’s concerns prior to this point. Allegations include instructions to diplomats like Colvin advising they, “hold back information in their reports to Ottawa about the handling of detainees” after one of Colvin’s seventeen memos on the topic made its way, “to one of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s senior security advisers.”

[Read more →]