Defence Minister Peter MacKay says he wasn’t personally using a black-tipped felt pen, poring over documents, blacking out references to the torture of Afghan prisoners. It is simply “nonsense,” he says, to believe that he or anyone in government was involved in that. The minister, who has been under fire for what he knew and when regarding detainee transfers, was referring to the mountain of redacted documents relating to torture allegations. They are so heavily edited, the opposition charges they are useless.
Mr. MacKay made his statements before the House of Commons defence committee today. “So continued references to me or anyone in the political branch redacting documents is nonsense and you know that,” Mr. MacKay charged.
More than once the committee proceedings became heated. At one point, NDP defence critic Jack Harris demanded a public inquiry into the prisoner controversy, prompting Tory MP Laurie Hawn, the parliamentary secretary to the Defence Minister, to pipe up. He accused Mr. Harris of trying to “hijack” the committee proceedings. And on it went like that.
Earlier in the committee meeting, however, Mr. MacKay tried to explain the rationale for blacking out the documents:
“The decision around redaction or editing – if you will, because I think a lot of people are perhaps not familiar with the word redaction – those decisions are not taken by politicians or ministers. Those decisions are taken at an arms length level by officials, trained officials, officials with national security clearance aided by the Attorney-General’s special department on national security.
“That is to say that decisions are taken around what information can be made public for the purposes of a parliamentary committee or otherwise based on national security concerns, to protect individuals, agencies, countries who have in some instances given us information and perhaps most importantly to protect Canadian citizens, soldiers and civilians who are working in missions like in Afghanistan where they could be put in harm’s way, their lives could be literally be at risk if certain information is made public for a nefarious purpose.”
Understood?
(Photo: Mr. MacKay and Chief of the Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk confer at the Commons defence committee this morning. Fred Chartrand/The Canadian Press)
