Tagged: Peter MacKay
Are the Harper forces backpedaling on torture?
The Star’s Tonda McCharles reports that the Conservatives are changing tack in the torture scandal.
“It is our understanding that other current and former DFAIT employees will be testifying before the Parliamentary Committee. Their testimony will provide important context and information about this issue.”
…The comments came hours after Defence Minister Peter MacKay insisted in Halifax Friday that the government’s attacks on Colvin’s credibility weren’t “personal.”
The federal government changed tack late Friday in response to allegations made by Richard Colvin, shifting to a wait-and-see approach and downplaying efforts to discredit the foreign service officer who says he warned Canada was violating its international obligations to avoid handing Afghan detainees over to certain torture.
Jamie Christoff, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs, released a statement cautioning that the full story has not yet been heard, despite Colvin’s bombshell testimony to a parliamentary committee, and the government would willingly participate in the parliamentary inquiry.
“It is important to let the Parliamentary Committee process unfold and to consider and weigh the testimony of subsequent witnesses before drawing any conclusions about how events in Afghanistan may have unfolded in 2006 and 2007,” Christoff said.
If it is the start of a big backdown, not everyone is on message:
Yet again Friday, Transport Minister John Baird said Colvin’s allegations “are nothing short of hearsay, sometimes second- or even third-hand information, or worse yet, information that came directly from the Taliban.”
Colvin’s torture testimony – #1
Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin told the Commons Committee on Afghan Detainees today that virtually all the prisoners Canada turned over to Afghan security forces in 2006 and 2007 were tortured. Colvin says senior Canadian military and civilian ignored his warnings about the abuse, and Red Cross officials who tried to intervene could not get their phone calls returned for three months. Here is:
- The Canadian Press account of Colvin’s testimony.
- A transcript of his opening statement.
- Video of Bob Rae questioning Peter MacKay on the allegations in Question Period.
- Stories from CBC, the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail.
If anyone has video of Colvin’s actual testimony, please send me the link.
The Globe and Mail quotes military and foreign affairs sources as saying Canadian diplomats in Afghanistan in 2007 were ordered to hold back information in their reports to Ottawa about the handling of the prisoners because the explosive human-rights controversy was seen as ‘detracting from the narrative’ Harper government wanted to promote.
MacKay cheerleads stonewalling of torture inquiry
Hats off to Murray Brewster of Canadian Press for his chilling story on the Harper Government’s determined campaign to prevent a Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry from getting to the bottom of allegations that Canadian troops in Afghanistan abetted torture.
The commission is investigating complaints by Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association that Canadian troops knowingly handed over prisoners to torture in Afghan prisons. But federal lawyers invoked a little known national security clause in the Canada Evidence Act to bar a key government witness from testifying. Their fig leaf? They claimed Richard Colvin, who was political director at a Canadian-run base when troops began handing over prisoners, had no relevant testimony to offer.
Colvin’s lawyer said he has both personal knowledge and documents relating “to the risk of torture resulting from the transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities.” Lead commission counsel Freya Kristjanson said Colvin has “highly relative, credible and important evidence to provide on the issues.”
Colvin was the only government witness who agreed to speak with commission lawyers, but the Justice Department invoked the gag order before he could do so. They also invoked a classic Catch 22, saying other witnesses might be allowed to testify if the commission could show they have relevant evidence, something commission lawyers will find hard to do since the witnesses, including a retired general, refuse to speak with them.
In the Commons Wednesday, Defense Minister and Central Nova MP Peter MacKay pretended there is no cover-up. He noted that the commission had praised the government for its openness. Kristjanson said MacKay was referring to comments she made last spring in reaction to the promised disclosure by federal lawyers, but they stopped co-operating immediately after she praised them.
The arrest of Anne Calder
The Halifax Chronicle-Herald details the arrest of Anne Calder, a defense lawyer and former Crown prosecutor, on suspicion of smuggling prescription narcotics to a client in the Burnside Jail.
As it happens, contrarian knows Calder slightly. She has always struck us as an idealistic, compassionate, conservative woman. She was also an outspoken admirer of Peter MacKay, with whom she served when they were both Crown prosecutors in Pictou County.
An Amherst native, Calder followed an unconventional career path. She graduated from Dalhousie and Carleton Universities, then worked as an airline flight attendant before earning her law degree at the University of British Columbia. At various times she worked as as a Crown prosecutor, either staff or casual, in Halifax, Truro, Pictou, and New Glasgow. Along the way she spent a few years in New Zealand, and graduated from the one-year, masters in journalism program at King’s in 2006.
An early test for the NDP government
Is Peter MacKay channelling John Buchanan? Is Stephen Harper keen to cultivate a second Danny Williams in Atlantic Canada?
Those are two possible explanations of the Harper Government’s mean-spirited, post-election reversal of its commitment to help fund the $40-million, four-rink arena planned for Bedford.
The Conservative about-face presents an early test for Darrell Dexter’s Government.
Last month, the feds assured HRM officials that the project was on track to receive $15 million in infrastructure funding from Ottawa’s stimulus program. The NDP Government likewise committed $15 million, and HRM was to finance the remainder. Last Friday, Ottawa abruptly informed city hall it no longer considered the project eligible under the infrastructure program. [See: AllNovaScotia.com — subscription only.]
Coming hot on the heels of the Harper Government’s lopsided rejection of paving projects in non-Tory Nova Scotia ridings, the reversal smacks of political punishment. South End Councilor Sue Uteck drew a direct line between the sudden federal disavowal and the June 9 election of and NDP government—including former Conservative cabinet minister Len Goucher’s defeat at the hands of Liberal Kelly Regan. Regan is married to Liberal MP Geough Regan.
Insiders say Dan O’Connor, Dexter’s chief of staff, has taken pains to cultivate a working relationship with MacKay chief of staff John MacDonnell. Whether those efforts are sufficient to give MacKay second thoughts about this latest bit of federal Conservative pettiness may foreshadow the state of Canada-Nova Scotia relations for the duration of the Harper government.
Paving the way for Tories – another view [cont.]
The indefatigable Wallace J. McLean (note correct spelling; mea culpa) has risen to contrarian‘s challenge, and defended his view that the MacDonald government’s paving proposals were as politically skewed as the Harper government’s selective approvals thereof.
This time he buttresses his case with a map, using traditional party colors in two shades: darker for ridings in which the government proposed paving; lighter for those where it did not.
Turning this map back into numbers, the Rodney government proposed work in two out of six rural Liberal districts (33%); three out of eight rural NDP districts (38%), and 13 out of 21 rural PC districts. That’s 62% of them.
Contrarian concedes that McLean has demonstrated a provincial Tory skew from which many will impute deliberate bias. But the provincial skew does not approach the 4-to-1 edge the Harper-MacKay Reformers Conservatives bestowed upon their own ridings. In either case, the new NDP administration has a chance to banish this ancient and corrupt system by implementing its promise of a five year paving plan to get the politics out of paving..
Paving the way for Tories – another view
Some days ago, contrarian reader Wallace J. McLean challenged contrarian to determine how many of the paving projects Nova Scotia submitted for federal stimulus funding were in provincial Tory ridings. “Too much work,” we said, and went back to surfing Digg and Stumbledupon.
Well, turns out Wally is a blogger himself, and after days with a magnifying glass comparing project lists with the boundaries of Nova Scotia’s 52 provincial ridings, he offers an answer:
Of the 37 projects put forward by the late Macdonald government in NS, five were located in Liberal districts, and five in NDP districts, based on the 2006 election results…. Twenty-six were located in districts which the Tories held, or had won in 2006.
Paving the way for Tories — feedback
Contrarian reader Wallace J. McLean wonders:
How does the map of road work requested by Premier Fiddler compare to the provincial electoral map as it stood prior to dissolution?
It’s an obvious question, but from a look at the map, I doubt the answer would turn up anything nefarious.
Provincial paving, by its nature, takes place mainly in rural ridings. That’s where provincial roads are. Before June 9, Tories held most of the province’s rural constituencies, so most of the proposed projects were undoubtedly in Tory ridings. To show bias, one would have to demonstrate that province’s proposed infrastructure projects disproportionately favored Tory ridings like the premier’s over rural Liberal ridings like Stephen McNeil’s.
Mr. McLean is welcome to test this hypothesis by going through the list and calculating the number of projects proposed per rural Tory riding vs. the number proposed per rural opposition riding. I’ll publish the results.
But it will take a fair bit of work just to figure out the riding where each project is located, and I’ll be surprised if the results show anything like the bias apparent in the Harper government’s approvals.
Paving the way for Tories
When the Harper Government announced an Infrastructure Stimulus Plan focused on construction-ready projects, Nova Scotia saw a golden opportunity to make headway on a huge problem: its crumbling highway system. The province sought federal approval for 39 paving projects.
But Ottawa approved only 20 of the paving jobs. Since the 19 rejected projects were all but identical to the 20 that received a federal go-ahead, it’s hard to figure out what criteria Ottawa used for its decisions. Until you look at a federal electoral map.
Projects in ridings held by Conservative MPs were almost four times as likely to receive federal approval as those in Liberal-held ridings. Contrarian used the provincial Freedom of Information Act to obtain a list of proposed projects for comparison with those approved. The map above shows the ratio of Harper-approved projects in each Nova Scotia federal riding. (Click here for a larger image.)
Projects proposed for the large Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley riding left vacant by the resignation of independent MP Bill Casey, where a byelection must take place by Fall, fared even better than those in Tory ridings. Seven of eight paving projects proposed for the traditionally Tory seat met with the Harper government’s approval, for a total of $5.2 million in federal funding.
Because they mainly encompass urban areas, the four Metro seats—two Liberal and two NDP—didn’t figure prominently in the calculations. One of two projects submitted for the four ridings, a paving job near Stanfield International Airport in NDP-held Sackville-Eastern Shore, was approved.
In the Central Nova riding held by Minister of National Defense Peter MacKay, Ottawa approved six projects worth $6.1 million, and rejected a single project worth $942,300.
By contrast, Liberal MP Scott Brison‘s Kings-Hants riding received approval for only one of seven proposed projects. It was worth $630,000 in federal aid, while the six rejected projects were worth a total of $4.2 million in federal funding.
In all, the province submitted paving projects worth $71.5 million, of which the feds would pay 45 percent or $32.2 million. (The federal portion of infrastructure stimulus projects is billed at 50 percent, but some costs are not eligible, so the actual federal contribution works out to 45 percent.)
Approved projects total $40.1 million, of which Ottawa will pay $18.1 million. Projects killed by the feds totalled $31.4 million, of which Ottawa would have paid $14.1 million.
The following table summarizes the outcome of the Harper Government’s response to Nova Scotia’s requests for approval of paving projects under the federal Infrastructure Stimulus Plan.
UPDATE: A spokesman for the Nova Scotia Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal referred questions on the federal approvals process to federal Infrastructure Minister John Baird. A call to Chris Day, press secretary to Baird, was returned by a departmental communications officer, who promised to get back to contrarian shortly.
UPDATE II: It appears that a section of the only project approved in Scott Brison’s riding actually crosses the line into Tory Greg Kerr’s turf. So the tally should read:
- Kings-Hants: 0.75 of 6.75; 11%.
- West Nova: 2.25 of 3.25; 69%.
