Afghan detainee deal a pioneering compromise on national security

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A deal between the minority Harper government and the opposition granting access to uncensored Afghan detainee records has not only averted a possible election but also pioneered a formal way for MPs to scrutinize Canada's most closely guarded secrets.

The 11th-hour compromise reached Friday stipulates that a small committee of MPs from all parties will review unfiltered versions of Canadian government records on this country's handling of Afghan prisoners. These contain information that federal government lawyers have previously withheld on the grounds they could harm national security.

Final say over precisely what secrets on detainees can be made public - without harming national security - will rest with a three-person panel of outside arbiters selected jointly by the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois.

The opposition majority in the Commons has pushed for access to uncensored records to pursue allegations that suspects rounded up by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were handed over to torture by local interrogators. They want to ensure the government is not hiding misdeeds, including evidence that Ottawa was willfully blind to abuse practised by Afghanistan's torture-prone intelligence service.

"We got what we needed to have here, a process where members of Parliament get to see the documents, nothing held back, no information concealed," Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale said.

"The MPs, with their own eyes, not through any filter, get to see the pieces of paper and they get to determine what's relevant."

The deal came shortly before a deadline set by Commons Speaker Peter Milliken, who in a historic verdict last month ruled that Parliament has an unabridged right to demand the detainee documents and that the government lacked a unilateral power to censor them. Failure to reach agreement would have paved the way for a contempt of Parliament motion against the government - and, potentially, a snap election.

The "agreement in principle" released Friday says a committee featuring one MP from each party - and one alternate - will read a trove of records estimated at between 20,000 to 40,000 pages. They'll be sworn to secrecy and be required to undergo checks to receive the necessary security clearances.

The MPs will identify records that they think are "necessary for the purpose of holding the government to account" and forward these to a three-person panel of eminent jurists - experts on national security protections - who will decide how much is released.

The expert arbiters will decide whether the records can be released uncensored, partially censored or via merely a scrubbed summary of their information.

"This is a good day for parliamentarians. It is a good day for all those who have respect for the rule of law in this country," Justice Minister Rob Nicholson told the House of Commons.

Constitutional expert Ned Franks, a professor emeritus at Queen's University, said the deal sets up an official and standard process for exchanges of national secrets that might have taken place informally in previous decades.

"It's establishing a formal procedure for something that has happened in the past ... say during the Second World War. Mackenzie King would have talked with the leader of the Opposition from time to time," Prof. Franks said.

Ken Dickerson, program manager at the University of Alberta's Centre for Constitutional Studies, said he thinks such a deal - allowing opposition MPs access to state secrets - is something that he could "really only see playing out again in a minority Parliament."

But Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae, once a member of the civilian watchdog that oversees Canada's spy agency, said he feels the cross-party arrangement on viewing detainee documents could have lasting impact.

"I don't think it's a one-off. I think it's an important evolution in how we deal with these security issues," Mr. Rae said.

All four parties have promised to draw up a memorandum that fleshes out their agreement in principle by May 31. The all-party committee could start reading documents in June and potential releases of information are expected to follow over the summer.