Maybe it’s just like the memories of Christmastime from when I was a kid. The snows were deeper, the tree more packed with presents. But I also recall a time when Ministers of government actually stood down for events they were involved with – sometimes quite tangentially. Yet thoughts of ministerial responsibility past dance in one’s head at the news today that…
Peter MacKay, Stockwell Day and Gordon O’Connor, then senior cabinet ministers, met the head of the International Red Cross in the fall of 2006 as the humanitarian organization tried to focus Canada’s attention on alleged abuses in Afghan prisons, The Canadian Press has learned. Precisely what Jakob Kellenberger told the three, as well as Robert Greenhill, then president of the Canadian International Development Agency, in the Sept. 26, 2006 meeting is blanketed by diplomatic secrecy.
See, just one month ago the news was that “reports amounted to evaluations of the Afghan prison system based on second- and third-hand evidence” and that “when the government had “credible” evidence, it acted in 2007 to strike a new deal.” So, is the understanding of the head of the International Red Cross not credible? Is the problem that if one cannot trust the Governor General, the judiciary, the news media, the military, the premiers, scientists and even our diplomats one also cannot be expected to trust the Red Cross because it isn’t a part of the PMO?
The sad thing for the Tories appears to be that if they had taken a different approach in this matter, admitted that 2006 was a bad year for the Afghan detainee file, this would have gone away quickly. Just as this is most certainly not about the actions of the military, it really did not have to become about the actions of members of the Federal cabinet in 2006 or 2009. But now it has.
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