Douglas Bell Nails It

There is a minor food fight going on over at the Globe&Mail about the primacy of Parliament vis-a-vis documentary evidence on Afghan detainees. It is really a spat between a water-carrier for the Conservatives, Norman Spector and one for the NDP, Brian Topp.

Douglas Bell, however, captures the larger issue

Watching my colleagues Norman Spector and Brian Topp so ably and intelligently flip each other off on the question of parliamentary privilege is a dizzying experience. It’s a debate which I enter with considerable trepidation. That said, here goes nothing.

Does the government of Canada really want to run the risk, however slight, of making their armed forces subject to supranational judicial organizations like the ICC? We signed onto the International Criminal Court precisely because we imagined that that our sovereign systems of review and assessment were beyond reproach. We helped create a body whose standards we ought by definition to exceed.

Hence, any failure to pursue the truth in matters whose inherent interest extend beyond our borders is a failure both to protect our sovereignty and to uphold the standards that justify our claim to sovereignty in the first place. Surely that cannot be the government’s intention.

Rick Hillier in the dock at The Hague? I doubt it. But perhaps a fallen government becomes more possible.