Cliff White writes: The most shocking aspect of the Colvin testimony is the attack the Tories Conservatives have waged against it.  If they are willing to do this in public, you can imagine what they were doing and will do in private.  My only hope is that this sticks to them....

19 November, 2009
After the jump, the complete transcript of Richard Colvin's testimony to the Commons Speical Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan. This is the unofficial, unedited, untranslated text, in the language spoken.

CANADA

Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan

Comité spécial sur la mission canadienne en Afghanistan

EVIDENCE number 15, Témoignages du comité numéro 15

UNEDITED COPY - COPIE NON ÉDITÉE

Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - Le mercredi 18 novembre 2009

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19 November, 2009

Unlike Britain and the Netherlands, Canada did not directly monitor how Afghan security forces treated detainees we turned over to them. We relied on the International Red Cross and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) to do that. But as Richard Colvin testified, AIHRC was not allowed into the prisons at Kandahar, and Canada's military brass devised a baffling six-step process for notifying the Red Cross in Kandahar when it turned over a prisoner (Military police to Canadian command at Kandahar Airport to CEFCOM in Ottawa to Canadian Embassy in Geneva to Red Cross International Headquarters to Red Cross unit...

19 November, 2009

In The Coast, Steve Kimber interviews retired Halifax homicide detective Tom Martin on the reasons behind the dismal record closing murder cases in HRM, where 48 killings remain unsolved since 1955. Martin blames the department's top brass Martin pins much of the blame for that on his former department’s senior managers who, he says, lack the training and experience to effectively manage major criminal investigations. The department’s own website, in fact, touts [Chief] Frank Beazley’s most significant career accomplishment prior to becoming chief in 2003 as serving for six years as officer in charge of human resources and training. His deputy, [Chris]...

19 November, 2009

Mike Targett writes: [A] "bucket defence" might be more familiar to some of your readers as Freud's "kettle logic." However, for Freud, the defence is used when the denier has difficulty accepting the truth, not simply difficulty admitting it. It's plain to see that for the Harper government, the truth was merely inconvenient. When you think of it, "detracting from the narrative" has a sort of "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" ring to it, doesn't it? So "bucket defence" is in fact better: the Harper government is not neurotic, but callous and even cruel. Unforgivable. (If we...

19 November, 2009

This morning's Ottawa Citizen offers another hint of how the Harper Government might rule if it ever gets a majority. Internal correspondence sent by mistake to CanWest News Service shows that while then-Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon pretended to support a Liberal motion urging the government to produce legislation supporting airline passenger rights, his office was pleading with the major airlines to step up their lobbying efforts against the motion. The documents also show that Transport Minister John Baird's office failed to consult consumer groups while developing its Flight Rights Canada campaign last fall, but sought and received industry approval at every...

18 November, 2009

New Yorker writer (and Port Medway summer resident) Calvin Trillin, who claims to hold the record for consecutive columns by an American about Canada (at two), deconstructs poutine in the magazine's Food Issue, out today. The piece itself is available on line only to subscribers, but here is a New Yorker podcast about it: Hat tip: Sarah Cooper-Ellis...

17 November, 2009

A mysteriously anonymous website, Herald Daily (or at least weekly), has published this intriguing graphic contrasting the population density and land mass of the Earth's 19 most capacious nations. I've included only a stub of the original, very large graphic here. Click on the image to see the whole thing. Hat tip: Flowingdata.com....

15 November, 2009

At the Brewery Market in Halifax. ...

14 November, 2009
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