Stopgap Measure Dept: Our parliamentarians want to make history while sitting in comfy offices in Ottawa while other Canadians are dying in Afghanistan defending democracy or at least that s what they were told they d be doing when they were sent to Kandahar. But what about the awkward position in which Ottawa might find itself regarding its international commitments to keep sensitive documents away from public scrutiny? What about the possibility that some of the information released in Canada might be embarrassing for an allied foreign government? Do we think that any other country would share sensitive information with us in the future? Too often last week I heard that we ve made history with Speaker of the House Peter Milliken s ruling on the secret files about Taliban detainees in Afghanistan. I beg to differ. This is not the first time that governments have withheld secret documents from Parliament. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has simply done what many predecessors did in the past. The difference is that a minority government doesn t control the House. The Speaker s wise decision is only a stopgap measure in a Parliament that isn t used to working with anything other than a majority. As
reported in the news.
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@t international commitments, public scrutiny
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