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Canadians need answers on detainees

Posted By Darren Ridgley

Posted 2 months ago

Canadians like to think of their country as representative of a well-calibrated moral compass, fighting the good fights and avoiding the uglier bits of armed conflict that we so often associate with more brutish, backwards nations.

Our American neighbours, as we well know, received a sobering dose of humility as a nation over the course of the Iraq War and the Bush years, when the torture of detainees and practices like water boarding became public knowledge, destroying for some the concept of what their just nation is really all about on the battlefield.

Canadians have been hearing, with increasing frequency, that their own military's conduct may not be so rosy, either. We've now been accused of handing over our captives in Afghanistan to people who tortured them.

Diplomat Richard Colvin was in the House of Commons last week, testifying that Afghan detainees handed over by Canadian troops to the Afghan Intelligence Service between 2006 and 2007 were likely tortured. In addition, he testified that many of the prisoners had little or no value in terms of fighting the insurgency.

Now, Canadians are faced with the same feeling that those south of the border have contended with since learning the truth about places like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. How could we be a part of something like this? Aren't we the good guys?

Former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier testified before a House of Commons committee Wednesday, calling Colvin's testimony "ludicrous" according to a CBC report. Hillier has also denied he'd seen reports including the allegations.

Present chief Gen. Walter Natyncyk as well as officials within the federal government have since said that transfers had been halted more than once because of beliefs they would be tortured, or because they were refused access to facilities. But a handful of pauses doesn't sound like it was nearly enough if Colvin's assertions turn out to have merit.

David Mulroney, now ambassador to China but former head of the country's Afghanistan Task Force, wanted to rebut Colvin's testimony in Parliament this week, only for Opposition MPs to say that was just too soon to hear from him, preferring instead to wait until the federal government releases documents regarding the allegations before hearing his testimony.

True or not, these accusations are cause for great concern for many Canadians who think to have a strong sense of the country's moral compass. If these allegations are revealed to be true, it wouldn't be the only time Canada has facilitated, however indirectly, behaviours we say we officially don't approve of.

Michael Byers explains in his 2007 book Intent For a Nation: What Is Canada For? that Canada was quick to jump on the anti-landmine bandwagon following the 1992 formation of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. With the support of then-foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy, the initiative really took off, and the 1997 Ottawa Landmines Convention on the subject has been ratified by over 150 countries who have all rallied behind the cause of reducing and destroying land mine stockpiles, as well as forbidding the use of and reliance on them. However, Canada's ratification of the Ottawa Convention came with a qualification which, Byers explains, is known as an "understanding", so as to allow Canadian troops to work alongside those of the United States, a country which continued to use the devices.

And so it came to be that, while Canada was influential in the initiative to eliminate the use of landmines in the modern world, it created an exception which allowed Americans to lay the things in the vicinity of Canadian soldiers, thereby allowing Canadians to indirectly benefit from their use without breaching the convention.

To Axworthy's credit, Byers explains in the book that the minister was unaware of the understanding and how it would affect the country's adherence to the convention. But one way or another, it seems that Canada as an international player has trouble holding to its own philosophies when it comes to foreign and humanitarian policy.

Whether or not the military was fully aware of what was going on in those Afghan prisons is yet to be revealed, and who knows if they will be, since the Tories have thus far dismissed calls for an inquiry. But now that the accusations have been levelled, we need to know for sure.

Canadians put too much pride in our country's collective morality to be comfortable with these sorts of indirect violations of that morality. Our reputation as a nation can't be kept gleaming, in our eyes or in anyone else's, if we don't place a more scrutinizing eye on the people we work or ally ourselves with when it comes to the business of war or anything else.