On CTV's Power Play show Wednesday host Tom Clark asked Brian Wilfert, the Vice-Chair of the Special Committee on Afghanistan (paraphrased) "Did Laurie Hawn contact you regarding participating in committee via teleconference, as he claims?" Wilfert's answer was a categorigal "Absolutely not!". You can choose who you believe.
I hope that a majority of Canadians do not care at all if there are partisan implications, for any party, in the Afghanistan detainee affair. We just want to know the truth.
We aren't getting the truth from our government.
Today in a sixteen page brief (PDF) addressed to the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan, Richard Colvin continued to set the record straight. Do read it.
Of the many issues noted, in my mind the most troubling accusation levied is that senior public service staff who both brief and take orders from Ministers and the Privy Council Office (the PM and his anointed) appear to have counselled Colvin and other embassy staff to lie about the situation in Afghanistan.
Think about it - the most senior levels of our government have institutionalized lying.
We aren't talking about some misdemeanor or minor public fraud but an issue of huge public importance, one that can bring down a government or, back then, hobble a new government. We are talking about a war which has cost Canadians dozens of billions of dollars since 2006. The financial and ideological capital tied up in this war are immense, not to mention the human casualties and suffering that are as a direct result of policy decisions made in the comfy confines of Ottawa area office buildings.
Given the obvious attempts by the government to hide the truth, or run from it, nothing less than a full judicial inquiry will do.
Inoffensive mural take-down latest in series of chilling-effects
Recently on CBC Radio One Vancouver City councillor Geoff Meggs went to lengths to poo-poo community concerns about 2010 Olympic games-related bylaw changes being voted in by the Vision Vancouver-dominated council.
Paraphrased, he said "I can't believe how many people I know will come up to me at an event or dinner party and express concern that we are going to march into people's property to remove signs". He went on to add that the bylaw changes council sought were only intended to give the city powers to deal with commercial infringement of the Olympic brand, and that in no way were the changes intended to impinge upon free speech.
Oh, really?
Vancouver orders removal of anti-Olympic mural (Marsha Lederman, The Globe and Mail, Friday December 11 2009)
In fact, when her landlord, Peter Wong, received a notice from the city telling him to remove the graffiti from his building, he had no idea what they were talking about. "I called them and said I cannot find the graffiti. And they said the sign [the mural] is graffiti." This surprised him, because the murals have been up for years and he had never heard from the city about them before.
Indeed such murals are common place at The Crying Room which has been showing work inside and outside since 1999. This piece did not draw the attention of city inspectors in 2006:
The five-ring piece in question was taken down mid-November.
Patrick Smith, director of Simon Fraser University's Institute of Governance Studies, said the removal of the sign is symptomatic of the high demands the 'Olympic movement' places on its host cities. He believes Vancouver will be the beginning of a shift away from the modern Olympic era, with communities saying the cost of hosting is too high.
"I think the city has kind of caved in to a whole serious of events here," said Prof. Smith, also a past chair of SFU's department of political science. "It [the Olympic movement] dictates an awful lot to local citizens. It's not as if the event isn't interesting and doesn't grab the attention of people around the world, but [the Olympic movement] goes too far and it asks too much."
The next time we hear Meggs or other councillors dishing out happy talk I hope that we are being informed the city inspector made an honest error, or was overzealous and has been scheduled for both an attitude adjustment and an art appreciation lesson. I'd prefer to hope that the inspector's bad taste has not been officially institutionalized by the city managers just in time for the 2010 games.
Yes, I know I'm probably giving the city too much credit here.
As I write this Chief of Defence Staff General Walter Natynczyk is holding a hastily called press conference to announce that contrary to statements he made just yesterday, indeed there is some evidence that some Canadian detainees transferred to other powers have suffered abuse.
It would appear that the good General is busy building the plausible deniability defence for Gordon O'Connor and Peter MacKay, and Stephen Harper of course.
Reports of the early Harper government's control over information are the stuff of legend. I simply do not believe that the PMO, and the generals, are as clueless as they make themselves out to be on this issue.
Both groups - the political and top military brass - have a huge vested interest, especially circa 2006, in keeping from the public any negative reports that would sour public opinion against the mission.
Sure, deaths of our troops are negative in the extreme, but these alone are not enough to turn public opinion against the government's direction. The public is sophisticated enough to understand that, whether they have enough information to determine for themselves if they agree with the mission or not.
But the public would not countenance in any way shape or form our political and military leaders prosecuting a war where basic Canadian values are being cast aside, and that is in fact what appears to have been done.
Not by the rank and file, but by the political and military leadership of this country.
It is a cover-up and nothing less than a criminal inquiry will suffice to get to the bottom of what has transpired.