He said. She said. Bernier in an integrity fight.

Agreed. Bernier, instead of answering questions put to him by his parliamentary colleagues has decided to issue his excuses via other means.

"Did Ms. Couillard inform me of past links with people involved in organized crime? The answer is no. She didn't inform me, nor did anyone else at any level. I knew of her past only what she wished to tell me," he told about 400 supporters who gathered at a hotel ballroom in Bernier's hometown.

"I only became aware of the rumours surrounding Ms Couillard's past on April 20, a few weeks before the information became public. At that time, I was no longer dating Ms Couillard."

And with that, Bernier creates a "He said/She said" hoping that speaking from his station alone will impeach the word of someone of a "lesser" station. The member of parliament vs the biker chick. Bernier has now challenged the public to choose which one of them is a liar and he's gambling that, given the unenviable position of having to believe a politician or an associate of a criminal gang, you will gravitate to the safety of believing the politician, regardless of how inept and clueless he may appear.

Score one for the biker chick.

If Mr. Bernier had been eager to set the record straight, he would have appeared before the parliamentary committee that for weeks requested his presence. At the very least, he would have answered the questions of reporters. Instead, he delivered a prepared text that sounded more like a campaign speech than an explanation.

We then have the explanation of the "misplaced" documents. Again, from The Star:

"These briefing notes were not sensitive enough to be bar-coded, which explains why their disappearance did not set off any alarms in my department. For my part, I did not notice they were missing, I do not recall misplacing them."

Really? That would lead to even further questions. Like, What were those briefing notes doing out of your briefcase in the presence of a non-involved person?

The briefing notes in question were supposedly those used for the Bucharest NATO summit in 2007 and appeared in Coulliard's residence after that summit had concluded. So why the hell would anybody remove briefing notes from an already concluded meeting? It's not like they represented homework or study material for some future event. If the documents are what we have been told they are, it would make no sense that they found their way out of the container in which they were being transported. If they were so meaningless they would have remained in a case, in the dark.

The fact that the documents were not bar-coded because they were not "sensitive enough" is utter bullshit. That and it speaks poorly for Bernier's immediate and closest aids that every document he took with him to Bucharest bearing a security classification was not accounted for and mustered back into secure stowage.

Ordinary seamen and privates in the Canadian Forces, when their trades require them to handle sensitive information, learn very early that any form of negligence surrounding the physical security of documents marked CONFIDENTIAL or higher will land them in a chair on the wrong side of the room at a standing court martial. Yet a minister of the Crown passes off a much more heinous act with a mere wave. They weren't that secret.

And then back to the G&M:

And there are other matters of public interest that Mr. Bernier declined to mention altogether. In particular, there is his alleged discussion with Ms. Couillard of government contracts in which she may have had an interest while he was Industry minister. And there are broader concerns about what other sensitive matters he may have discussed with her during his time in Foreign Affairs.

Score two for the biker chick.

Tarts, Toffs and Traitors

Mistake?

Who says?

Given the questions that could be asked and aren't getting any answers, the only thing we are hearing are the words of Harper. And he isn't about to give us the clear truth.

I smell Profumo in the air.

Harper may well have achieved his greatest wish: A return to a past he for which he was not present and does not understand in the slightest.

Omar Khadr

G&M : "The U.S. soldier Omar Khadr is alleged to have killed may have died as a result of friendly fire, Mr. Khadr's lawyers argued at Guantanamo Bay yesterday.

Mr. Khadr's U.S. military defence lawyer, Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler, revealed in court that several accounts of the 2002 gun battle show that U.S. soldiers were throwing grenades when they stormed the Afghan compound containing Mr. Khadr.

Mr. Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade at U.S. troops, mortally wounding a medic. The Canadian was 15 at the time."

That's Khadr in the picture at his time of capture.

"It was also revealed that an official with the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs met Thursday with lawyers in the Khadr case in Guantanamo Bay, and showed them a copy of a report compiled by the Americans in the months after the 2002 Afghan battle."

"The report was originally deemed classified, but was then declassified when it was handed over to the Canadians.
Military prosecutors at Guantanamo Bay, after reviewing the report, said it may still contain classified information, so Cdr. Kuebler would not comment on its details. However, he said it includes exculpatory information because it contains a description of events that is inconsistent with — and, at times, contradictory to — other reports.
The Canadian copy of the report is especially important because the Americans have since been unable to locate the original copy, meaning the Canadian copy of the report may be the only one still available."

There's a dim hope this may prove a breakthrough for Khadr.

In February a leaked copy of witness testimony revealed that Khadr had not been the only survivor in the compound, as previously claimed, and that nobody had seen him throw the grenade.

In March, Kuebler insisted that "Lt. Col. W.", the Army Commander for Eastern Afghanistan at the time of the attack, had initially written in his report the day after the firefight that "the person who threw a grenade that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher J. Speer also died in the firefight", meaning of course that the grenade had not been thrown by Khadr. The report was rewritten several months later to say that the grenade thrower had been "engaged", rather than "killed", changing the wording that would have possibly exonerated Khadr.

In 2005, Guantanamo's then chief prosecutor told presiding officers that any evidence suggesting a suspect was innocent would be given a secret security classification, so that defence teams would not learn of its existence.

Although the G&M story doesn't specifically say so, I sincerely hope this visiting DFAIT official brought the Canadian copy of the original US report because Canada has behaved shamefully up till now, refusing to request the extradition of a child soldier despite third party testimony of his having been tortured.
Not that Canada hasn't been involved . Khadr was visited six times in Guantanamo by Canadian officials who showed him pictures of people they wished identified, including Maher Arar, before turning his testimony over to US officials. Khadr's US military lawyer eventually requested that they be refused further access to Khadr for his own benefit.

Currently Cdr. Kuebler is waiting on whether the Canadian Supreme Court will ask the government to hand over all documents relating to Khadr's case.

"Cdr. Kuebler said Mr. Khadr's conviction is effectively a done deal if a trial commences under the current conditions. "I don't believe anyone can get an acquittal in Guantanamo Bay," he said."

"Canada had reason to know that Omar was being, if not tortured, at least seriously mistreated by the U.S. government and yet it did nothing and has done nothing," said Kuebler.
"I think it's shameful that Canada has displayed indifference for the plight of a Canadian citizen for no other reason than his father and family are unpopular."

On Tuesday, standing next to Condoleezza Rice in Washington, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier said : "Mr. Khadr faces serious charges and it will be premature to comment about the legal process right now and appeal process because they’re still ongoing. And what we will do is we’ll do -- and I received also assurances that Mr. Khadr has been treated humanely. So we’ll see the legal procedure, and after that we’ll react."

Cross-posted at Creekside

Add a little spice to that Bernier. It lacks flavour.

Maxime Bernier has gone into Harperite-bob-and-weave mode, a condition we've seen from Gordon O'Connor, Petey MacKay, Rona Ambrose, Gary Lunn and any other Conservative cabinet minister who finds themselves at odds with what is written by government and what they actually present as their public face.

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier says a department training manual that lists the U.S. and Guantanamo Bay as sites of possible torture does not convey the government's views or position.

In a statement, Bernier says he regrets the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual, adding that it contains a list that "wrongly" includes some of Canada's closet allies.

Bernier says the manual is neither a policy document, nor a statement of policy, and that he has directed it to be reviewed and rewritten.

Embarrassment?! What embarrassment? I'm not embarrassed to have the Canadian government state what we already know is true. We, the people of this nation, know that a solid majority of US citizens, whether they actually support the actions or not, know that the US government engages in torture.

So, if we know that they know, why is the Canadian government suggesting publicly that such is not the case?

But now, because a document, which clearly labels a truth about the United States and specifically the Bush administration, is now public... and apparently was never intended to be made so, it's about to get the Bush treatment: It's going to be "disappeared".

Bernier says the manual is neither a policy document, nor a statement of policy, and that he has directed it to be reviewed and rewritten.

What's to rewrite?

The debate that has gone on south of the border has resulted in Bush administration officials trying to lie and obfuscate their way around a known fact: the US government uses methods of interrogation which amount to torture. There are clear admissions of waterboarding.

So, a question to you, Mr. Bernier. You are not in front of a US congressional committee, nor a public inquiry, nor commission of any form. You do not have to get into the specifics of any country. You have no reason to dodge a clear answer since you aren't going to be held accountable for it. You simply have to answer the question, "yes" or "no".

Mr. Bernier, do you consider waterboarding torture?

UPDATE: I have had the above question sent directly to Maxime Bernier.

Net neutrality may be the next casualty of Harper's regime

Now it's getting personal. Via SaskBoy is this CBC report which says that Industry Minister Maxime Bernier is favouring the big telecoms over consumers in relation to Net Neutrality.

Internal documents suggest the Tory government is reluctant to impose consumer safeguards for the web because it wants to protect the competitive position of businesses that offer Internet access.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press indicate that senior advisers to Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, who has previously declared a "consumer first" approach, are carefully heeding the arguments of large telecommunications companies like Videotron and Telus against so-called Net neutrality legislation.

As SaskBoy says,

Net Neutrality is a poor catch phrase. It doesn’t describe the status quo in a way everyone understands, and confusion breeds ignorance on the topic. If you asked someone, “Are you in favour of Net Neutrality?” they’d probably have to think about that one, and more likely couldn’t come up with an answer that makes sense. A better thing to ask (although biased in favour of consumers) would be, “Do you want [insert mega-communications corporation name here] to be able to charge select customers for faster delivery of Internet information?”

There’s some suggestion from recently obtained documents, that Industry Minister Bernier is going to favour scrapping Net Neutrality, so that bloggers and other independent [non-wealthy] content providers, are going to have less ability to distribute their information on the web. For the techies, consider this the mother of all packet shaping [bandwidth choke] - and every program is choked down to unbearable limits, even if you pay for a highspeed connection to your ISP.

Basically, regardless of what you pay for your high-speed connection, if you wanted your content, a blog for example, to have any status on the web you would have to pay one of the major telecoms. All others would be relegated to substandard speeds and, as stated, bandwidth choke.

One Internet expert calls the minister's briefing materials, obtained under the Access to Information Act, "one-sided."

"These documents reveal that in Canada, the industry minister and his policy people appear unlikely to provide Canadian Internet users with similar protections to those being offered in the United States," Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa, said Tuesday.

[...]

But Jim Johannsson, spokesman for Telus, says Canadian consumers have nothing to fear, and disputes the notion that the current legislation needs to be replaced with something tougher.

"The existing legislation has never really been tested, so it's a stretch to say it's ineffective," Johannsson said. "Should the need arise, the CRTC has the authority to deal with any problems."

Johannsson is being overly simplistic. Telus benefited when the CRTC was overruled by Bernier on the VoIP question. Are we all to believe that they're just going to lay back and do nothing? The Harperites have already proven with the VoIP decision that they have no respect for decisions made by the regulator and clearly favour the big telecoms. They did it with VoIP and they'll do it with internet service.

In the various background papers and question period notes prepared for Bernier, there is short shrift given to the arguments in favour of Net neutrality legislation.

Bernier is advised that major telecom companies are "determined to play a greater role in how Internet content is delivered" and that "they believe they should be the gatekeepers of content, with the freedom to impose fees for their role."

Yet elsewhere in the documents, his advisers, despite clearly acknowledging the intentions of the companies, say "it would be premature at this time to draw any conclusions."

Premature, my ass. Keep in mind that the major telecoms aren't there to provide a service. They are out to make money and if they can do it by providing less service, they will, just as they have done in the past.

If we need examples of how the big service providers would interfere we don't have to go far. They've already done it.

Telus, in 2005, blocked Telus internet customers from opening a website supporting the Telecommunications Workers Union during a labour dispute that year. And Shaw Cable charges an extra $10 per month to give competing VoIP customers the same connection and sound quality as customers who use Shaw exclusively. Essentially what Shaw is saying is that they do care what you do with your internet connection after they sell it to you. And if they don't like it, they'll charge you more.

This is big. Really big. Given the way the Conservatives have been handing the big telecoms anything and everything they've asked for, despite CRTC decisions to the contrary, Bernier is not to be trusted. We already know not to trust the telecoms and cable providers.

For a very clear picture of what Bernier and the telecoms are up to, go here.