Afghan detainees hearings to resume in March
OTTAWA — The government has opened the way for more formal hearings on the Afghan detainees affair, pledging Wednesday to reconvene the special Commons committee on Afghanistan when Parliament resumes in early March.
"Afghanistan remains a public policy priority and the Special Committee on Afghanistan will be reconstituted once the new session begins," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.
While the committee can look at detainees further, a spokesman for the prime minister said the government also hopes MPs will deal with Canada's non-military role in Afghanistan after Canadian Forces withdraw from the mission in 2011.
Opposition MPs welcomed the move but said they would still proceed with a half-day informal committee hearing on detainee policy on Feb. 3 without their Conservative counterparts.
In a related development, the government decided after two months of delay to cover legal fees for diplomat Richard Colvin to testify in March about detainees at hearings by the Military Police Complaints Commission.
Colvin sparked a political firestorm when he alleged at the Commons committee last fall that senior officials ignored the risk of torture to detainees transferred to the Afghan security service by Canadian Forces in 2006-07 when he was posted to Afghanistan.
Opposition politicians have accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of proroguing Parliament until March 3 to avoid the detainee issue by halting the committee and the daily questions that would arise in the Commons. Before the session was suspended, Conservative government MPs boycotted two committee hearings.
The government, however, has said the decision was to put more focus on economic recovery.
Earlier Wednesday, NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar suggested the government planned to kill the committee. But Liberal MP Bryon Wilfert, committee vice-chairman, said the government is obligated to reconvene the committee.
"It's not a negotiable point," he said.
The committee was struck in 2008 to provide oversight on Canada's mission in Afghanistan. One of its mandates is to discuss Canada's role — if any — after the scheduled 2011 withdrawal of troops.
Andrew MacDougall, deputy press secretary at the PMO, said the committee agenda is up to its members, and the membership of the committee is up to the parties.
"As Canada's military mission in Afghanistan is set to end in 2011, we hope the Special Committee will play a constructive role in considering the future of Canada's non-military role in Afghanistan," MacDougall added.
At a news conference, Dewar resumed efforts to convince the government to release documents on detainees that have been withheld on "operational security" grounds.
The U.K. and U.S. governments have released figures on detainees, he said, asking why "our government treats the same information as a 'state secret'?"
The U.K. government released the information in response to a written question by an MP while the U.S. released names of Afghan detainees as a result of a court ruling.
Dewar provided a copy of British tallies showing that since 2006 its forces detained 739 prisoners, released 379, transferred 352 to Afghan authorities and that eight "died in U.K. medical facilities of wounds sustained on the battle field."
Dewar asserted the Conservative government's "culture of secrecy has limited Parliament's ability to engage in an informed debate about our role in Afghanistan."
There are two witnesses lined up for the opposition hearing next Wednesday — human rights lawyer Errol Mendes and parliamentary law expert Robert Walsh.
Walsh has said the committee is entitled to unedited documents from the government.
