MPs silent on search for torture evidence

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If you want to shut down a conversation in Ottawa today, ask the Liberals, Conservatives or Bloc Québécois how their parties are faring as they search for incriminating evidence among secret government records on Afghan detainees.

They've got little to say on a subject that a short time ago electrified Parliament, tripped up the Harper government and contributed to the shuttering of the Commons throughout early 2010.

Now, everybody's gone quiet.

The matter has been sidelined through a deal Stephen Harper cut with the Liberals and Bloc last June that sent opposition MPs on an exhausting paper chase.

The ensuing five-month document hunt has derailed the political debate over whether Ottawa has been hiding proof that Canadian soldiers knowingly transferred Afghan prisoners to be tortured.

Afghan detainees have barely rated a mention in the Commons since MPs returned in September. An inquiry by a Parliamentary committee stalled in June.

Things began to go awry after a Parliamentary showdown last spring, when House Speaker Peter Milliken ruled the opposition-dominated Commons had a right to ask for uncensored files on Canada's handling of detainees.

Threatened with a vote of contempt by the opposition majority, Mr. Harper agreed to share the confidential documents with opposition parties - but only under strict constraints that the NDP decided it could not support.

The mountain of documents has proved a challenge for the Liberals and Bloc. Since July, MPs from both these parties and the Conservatives have worked as a committee, reviewing the uncensored files in a downtown Ottawa office.

So far, they have nothing to report, and both the Liberals and Bloc are tight-lipped about the matter, prevented from even discussing the proceedings by a clause in their deal with Mr. Harper.

"The review of documents is to take place with all the procedural protections normally accorded to in-camera proceedings, including a ban on the publication of the proceedings," says the deal signed by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe and Mr. Harper.

Human rights lawyer Paul Champ, who has fought legal battles for greater scrutiny of Canada's record on detainees, said he's puzzled why the Liberals and Bloc are no longer pressing the Harper government on the matter in the Commons.

Canadians are still transferring detainees to Afghanistan's torture-prone National Directorate of Security, and diplomat Richard Colvin is standing by his allegations that Canada turned a deaf ear to early warnings against the practice back in 2006.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae rejects the notion that the detainee issue has been ignored.

"It hasn't fallen off the agenda at all … the committee's doing its work."

Asked why the Liberals aren't questioning the Tories in the Commons on the matter, Mr. Rae said it wouldn't make sense.

"We all agreed that we'd let the committee do its work and if we were to ask any questions in the House all they'd say is, 'It's all being considered by the committee.'"

Mr. Champ, who's worked for groups such as Amnesty International on the detainee file, said the Liberals and Bloc are giving the Harper government a free pass. "If they're being quiet now because they want to see the parliamentary review take its course, well, I think they've completely fallen into the Harper government's trap."

Mr. Rae referred further questions to Liberal MP Stéphane Dion, the party's main player in the screening of detainee documents.

But Mr. Dion refused repeated requests to discuss the matter. "He says there's really not much he can say," a Dion staffer said.

The Bloc declined to make available their MPs on the record search committee, and Mr. Duceppe had little to say except that he'd like to see the records as soon as possible.

Conservative MP Laurie Hawn, the Tory member of the multi-party detainee-record review committee, said the MPs have combed through about 18,000 to 20,000 pages.

"I am not going to talk about what we've read, but we are working well together."

He said he couldn't say when the three parties might have something to report.

The NDP has boycotted this review of documents, arguing that the conditions accepted by the Liberals and Bloc will not allow the most important deliberations over the handling of detainees to be made public. For instance, the deal stipulates that any advice provided by Justice Department lawyers about the legality of Canada's treatment of detainees cannot be released.

NDP defence critic Jack Harris said the Liberals and Bloc have given the Harper government what amounts to a half-year break on the matter.

"Two of the three opposition parties are essentially co-opted by the government and a cone of silence has fallen over the issue."

Mr. Champ said the results of this document review will fall short of what could have been achieved by a public inquiry.

"The Liberals and the Bloc can come out of this review process and say we've found this or that. But whatever they say, I think Canadians will take it with a grain of salt because they will see it as politicians trying to score political points."

He said the issue is so serious that it should be handled by a non-partisan inquiry.

"We're talking about Canadians' potential involvement, directly, or in direct complicity, with torture."

Darrell Bricker, a pollster at Ipsos Reid, says there are good reasons the Liberals would want to back off, because the controversy wasn't a bread-and-butter issue for voters.

"I don't think it was necessarily an issue that had any political traction … although it had a lot of journalists interested in it.

"I'm not saying the detainee issue was unimportant, and I am not saying how some of this stuff was handled was necessarily terrific either, but if you're looking at it from a political perspective, it was time wasted on an issue that didn't have any traction."