The Harper government's controversial decision to ban the Canadian news media from ceremonies honouring repatriated war dead originated in the Prime Minister's Office and was made primarily for political reasons, multiple sources close to the government said yesterday.
"It was not [Defence Minister]Gordon O'Connor's idea," one said. "Exactly whose idea it was is somewhere in the Langevin Block."
Several sources close to the Prime Minister's Office said the strategy originated with Sandra Buckler, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's new communications director. She then sold it to Mr. Harper, arguing it would generate only "a week of bad publicity," after which it would be accepted as a fait accompli, sources said.
Asked whether it was her idea, Ms. Buckler replied in an e-mail: "Not true." She declined to say whose idea it was.
Critics of the government say the move was an attempt to minimize upsetting images of returning Canadian war dead, for fear these might erode public support for the mission in Afghanistan.
"The issue is they don't want that kind of coverage and they want to shorten the ceremonies as much as possible," McGill military historian Desmond Morton said.
"They [the Harper government]are very aware of the American right's view of what went wrong in Vietnam, which was too much attention to body bags coming home."
Six Canadians have died while serving in Afghanistan so far this year, including five soldiers and one senior diplomat.
On Wednesday, Prof. Morton delivered a speech at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, where the repatriation ceremonies take place. He said that he spoke to many servicemen and servicewomen about the matter, and that members of the military are adamant about the need to protect the privacy of the grieving families, should they request it.
But beyond that, "most of them felt the [media]attention was long overdue and important, just to remind Canadians that the Canadian Forces are doing something," he said.
Mr. O'Connor, a former general, is also sensitive to the need to protect the privacy rights of military families, but beyond that has no strong views on whether there should or should not be a blanket ban on media coverage, said a source familiar with the Defence Minister's views.
Étienne Allard, Mr. O'Connor's communications director, declined to comment on the origin of the decision to ban media coverage of repatriation ceremonies.
During the debate in recent days, the government has insisted the ban was imposed only out of deference to the privacy needs of families of deceased soldiers. Mr. O'Connor repeated this again in Question Period yesterday. The government's position, he said, is that there can be media coverage of ceremonies for war dead in Afghanistan, and that families can allow media to attend private funerals if they choose.
Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh has hammered the government daily on the issue, saying the ban on military ceremonies on the tarmac in Trenton, Ont., and a similarly controversial decision not to lower the Peace Tower flag to half-mast when a soldier is killed overseas, do a disservice to the military.
"If we are to keep Canadians with us with respect to this mission, then we need to keep Canadians with us throughout the journey of our soldiers," including those killed in combat, Mr. Dosanjh said in an interview.
However, within military circles the flag debate is somewhat less controversial. Many retired officers have pointed out that the Defence Department has an extensive flag protocol for paying respects to fallen soldiers, which includes:
Half-masting all flags in the theatre of operations, in this case Afghanistan, between the day of death and sunset on the day of the funeral;
Half-masting all flags at the Canadian home base of the serviceman or servicewoman;
Half-masting flags at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa;
Half-masting all flags in the respective service branch (army, navy, air force) on the day of the funeral.
The policy of lowering the Peace Tower Flag to half-mast to honour war dead came into place by royal decree in 1919, in reaction to public dismay and shock over First World War casualties -- 67,000 Canadians were killed and 173,000 wounded.
The practice of repatriating bodies of slain soldiers began in 1970, after unification of the three branches of the military. Before that, Canadian soldiers were "buried where they fell," said John Knoll, a spokesman for the Defence Department.
Repatriating large numbers of dead such as occurred in both world wars and the Korean War was logistically impossible, he said. But in the early 1970s there was a view that "we were not likely to see mass casualties like in the Second World War . . . making it more feasible to repatriate remains."
According to protocols maintained by the Heritage Department, the Prime Minister retains broad discretion to order the lowering of the Peace Tower flag as he sees fit.
Liberal prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin exercised that right with increasing frequency in the latter years of the Liberal government.
The recent practice of lowering the flag whenever a Canadian soldier dies overseas began in 2002, after the killing of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan by friendly fire.