Deja Vu All Over Again?

The latest controversy with the Prime Minister Harper Conservative Government in Canada: Did Canadian soldiers hand over detainees to the Afghan National Police, knowing that it was likely these detainees would be tortured, on the Conservatives' watch?

Whether Canadian soldiers did or not appears not to be the fault of the soldiers, but rather whether the ruling government received the information and acted appropriately to change the situation. Poor Mr. Colvin was directed to appear in front of a Commons committee and the Conservative government used every trick in the spin book to try to discredit his testimony. The committee demanded uncensored documents to be presented...no can do...national security. The opposition parties are demanding a public inquiry. No, the Conservatives cite the current economic climate as a reason not to spend money to get at the truth.

Apparently, in last year's election, when the Conservatives campaigned on a platform of transparency and accountability, they either crossed their fingers, or they had a little asterisk that referred you to the bottom the page which stated it didn't apply to them. And of course, whenever they couldn't come up with a good counter argument to any issue (not just this one), they defaulted to bringing up the Liberal sponsorship scandal to deflect criticism.

It seems as if Canadians are not really interested. Poll numbers show that this is not a ballot question. The electorate ask: did Canadians torture Afghans? If the answer is no (and that appears to be the case), then it doesn't matter. The truth is, if Canadians handed detainees over to the Afghan police knowing that they would be tortured, then Canada is contravening international law. The fact that the Conservative government is using every trick they can to discredit statements made to that effect, that they are withholding documents that may or may not implicate them, certainly gives the appearance they they are hiding something. So much for transparency.

The soldiers are not at fault here. They were doing their job. The Canadian government is the one responsible for setting the policy and procedures in place, since this was a government-to-government transfer. It appears that the Conservative government either knew something and chose to ignore it, or did not know anything and chose not to seek out what was going on. Either way, there appears to be a lack of leadership on their part. The fact that the Conservatives are blocking attempts to get at the truth does not bode well. So much for accountability.

Something I find coincidental is that the Somalia affair, which occurred in March 1993, happened while the Conservatives last formed the Canadian government. This is where a couple of Somalis were either killed outright, or captured, tortured and killed, by members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment, while engaging in a military operation in Somalia. It's not likely that this incident alone brought the government down, but it certainly cast a pall over them.

Canadians need to take notice of the current situation with Afghan detainees. Their ambivalence over whether Afghans are torturing Afghans is shameful. Does this mean if Canadians were torturing Canadians, that it would be okay? What about Mr. Mahar? After a public inquiry, it was determined that Canadian officials were complicit in handing him over to Syria to face months of torture, ending in a settlement worth millions of dollars. Canadians used to be known as the nice guys of the world. Is this changing? Should Canadians turn a blind eye to international commitments when it's convenient to do so?

Canadians need to hold the Conservative Government to their transparency and accountability promise. If they're not transparent on the Afghan detainee issue, will they be on issues that affect Canadians more directly? How about stimulus spending? Bailouts? Long gun registry? And whatever else comes along?

The Conservative government needs to man up on this Afghan detainee issue. They need to release uncensored documents to those investigating that have the proper security clearance. They need to take responsibility. They need to lead. Instead, they scurry around with their strategists' supplied briefing notes discrediting everyone and everything except their own "message". The fact that some uncensored documents have been leaked to the media shows that there are some people with knowledge of the facts that are concerned enough to do so, knowing that they may face prosecution for leaking secret documents. The fact that these documents were leaked indicates something is amiss.