OTTAWA – Between 20,000 and 40,000 uncensored pages of documents about Canada’s handling of Afghan detainees will be secretly examined by a security-cleared all-party committee of MPs under a government-opposition deal announced Friday that is being hailed as a milestone for parliamentary democracy.
Expected to start in June, a panel of three eminent jurists will act as arbiters, advising the eight-member committee of MPs on how to disclose "relevant and necessary" information to the public in a summary or other form that does not jeopardize national security. The jurist panel rulings on disclosure are "final and unreviewable."
"It’s really an experiment and something completely new for the House of Commons and for the opposition to be able to see this type of document," Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters during a stop in St.-Felicien, Que.
"I’m optimistic that it will work out…I think it serves everybody’s purposes and I think it’s a good day for Parliament that we reached the agreement."
Each party will assign two MPs – one to spell the other off while wading through documents – and each of whom will take an oath of secrecy and obtain security clearances. Only one MP from each party will be allowed to review documents at a secret location at one time.
New Democrat Party MP Jack Harris and Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh, their party’s most vocal critics on the detainee file, both said they likely will not look at the secret documents so they can remain free to speak out without accidentally breaching national security.
The agreement averted a parliamentary showdown in a six-month-old dispute between the Conservative government and the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois over allegations top government and military officials turned a blind eye to a substantial risk of torture faced by detainees transferred to Afghan custody by Canadian soldiers.
MPs are expected to begin in June.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said the target date of a formal memorandum of understanding is May 31, and MPs in other parties said the committee members and the three jurists – on whom all parties must agree – may be chosen by that time.
"I think it is a victory for Parliament and for Canadians," Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale, who participated in the negotiations, told reporters.
The NDP has ruled out approval for the panel of retired judge Frank Iacobucci, who has already been hired by the government to review public servants’ redactions (blacked out passages) in more than 8,000 pages of documents tabled in the House.
The justice minister said the redactions by public servants "are done by non-partisan public servants who have the best interests of this country at heart" and who will be available to explain them to the MPs.
Redacted documents tabled so far range from notes by Foreign Affairs monitors who interviewed detainees at Afghan prisons, including one case where tools of torture were discovered, to e-mailed memos by Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin, who alleged last fall that his own warnings and human rights reports about torture by Afghanistan’s police and security service were ignored by his superiors in government and by top military officials.
The deal staved off an opposition threat of contempt proceedings, which could have paved the way to an election if an agreement was not reached by 1:30 PM ET Friday.
That was an extension of a deadline set previously in a ruling by House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken.
Milliken ruled MPs have the right to see uncensored government documents but must protect national security.
Harris said negotiations were "difficult and intense," but successful in finding a non-partisan format in which the public can be confident.
"We have heard of cases where, you know, a package of newspaper clippings have ‘top secret’ stamped on them," Harris said.
"You know, there is a lot of things that go on behind closed doors in the government. This is going to be the parliamentarians seeing everything and determining what they need to know more about and when these documents go to the arbiters, they are not to decide whether they should be released or not, but they will decide the form in which the information that is required is going to get out."
"This is a good day for Canadian democracy," Liberal MP Dominic Leblanc, who also participated in negotiations, told reporters. "We’re all delighted with this historic agreement."
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