Thursday, November 19, 2009

Let's Have a Public Inquiry

The focus of today's Question Period was the allegation, put forward by diplomat Richard Colvin, that prisoners handed over by the Canadian Forces to the Afghan government were abused and tortured. In response to Opposition questions on the issue, the Minister of Defence repeated that the evidence of Mr. Colvin is questionable and that indeed it is false.

Peter Mackay said that "what is being relied upon here is nothing short of hearsay, second- or third-hand information, or that which came directly from the Taliban.” He also maintained that there has been no proven instance of torture.

He maintains also that Richard Colvin's case does not stand the test of reason, as he could have informed government ministers, which he didn't do. However, there are numerous reasons that Mr. Colvin might not have spoken to ministers then, if indeed this is the case. He may have been, like Mr. Mackay, unsatisfied with the quality of the evidence before him.

Due to these vastly differing accounts of the treatment of prisoners and questions surrounding the evidence of both Mr. Colvin and the government, a public inquiry is in order. It is the only instrument we have that will force both sides to present evidence meeting specific guidelines.
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3 comments:

  1. How much did the Brian Mulroney Inquiry cost and what did Canadians think about spending taxpayers money on that?

    This is another example of sucking and blowing at same time.

    In 2002-2006 can you link where the Liberals or Nato sent those Prisoners they captured?

    Or

    are you suggesting only in 2006 forward prisoners were abused?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The point would be to find out when the government first knew about torture and whether was an attempt to hide the situation. Colvin wrote the reports in 2006 and 2007, when he was a diplomat in the country, after the Liberals were out of power. Currently, what we have are conflicting reports. Someone is lying. If the government is, there are serious problems with the current administration.

    Nice partisan dodge by throwing out the question about whether prisoners were tortured before 2006, when the Liberals were in power. Maybe. There could be an investigation to find out. Interesting to note that there was a change in the mission starting in 2006 when Canada started moving into Southern Afghanistan and when the casualties started to mount and public support dropped for the mission (which gives the government a solid motive to hide this report).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Suppressed Medical Records (File 5100-13465/001)

    St. Catharines, Ontario

    - Privacy Commissioner of Canada (Sect. 25,26,28)

    - C.M.H.A / C.A.M.H. - Brock University

    Further details Google:

    Medicine_Gone_Bad

    or

    http://medicine-gone-bad.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete

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