Prime Minister Stephen Harper, April 20, 2006 (highlights mine):
You can’t govern effectively without trust. And there can be no trust without integrity and transparency.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, 29 November 2009 (highlights mine):
“We will want to have some Parliamentary input but I don’t sense a desire on the part of any party to extend the military mission.”
The Canadian Press, 1 May 2010 (highlights mine):
The future of the Afghan mission is quietly being shaped in the corridors and backrooms of Parliament Hill.
Here, some Conservatives and Liberals are having hushed talks about Canada’s role in Afghanistan beyond next year, The Canadian Press has learned.
As MPs from all sides try to resolve a long-simmering dispute over access to uncensored Afghanistan detainee documents, parallel albeit passing discussions about the mission are underway in Ottawa.
The overtures aren’t formal. People interviewed for this story stressed the talks are more like feelers going out than anything else.
But what arises from these casual chats could have profound implications on Canada’s military and civilian functions in Afghanistan ….
This is how we’re deciding how Canada plans to keep helping Afghanistan after Canadian troops are gone? All this while the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan carries on about detainees instead of, oh, I don’t know, the “Canadian Mission in Afghanistan”?
The troops deserve better.
The taxpayers deserve better.
Canada deserves better.
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