Kerry Pither

It’s been almost three years since the Arar inquiry released its report calling for a new watchdog for the agencies involved in national security investigations, and the government is still saying it needs more time, and wants to wait for the outcome of yet another inquiry — Justice John Major’s Air India Inquiry. The excuse came again in the government’s response to the Commons Public Safety Committee report, which called for implementation of all of the Arar Inquiry’s recommendations without delay.

The government’s response was tabled last week on the one-year anniversary of the release of former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci’s report, which determined that Canadian agencies had contributed to the torture of Ahmad El Maati Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin by sharing unsubstantiated allegations about them with Syrian, Egyptian, U.S. and other agencies. The government says it can’t act now to correct the record because of ongoing litigation — another excuse that has no credibility. Read more in my op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen today.

The Harper government is doing all it can to downplay the shocking findings in the Iacobucci Inquiry’s report, but don’t fall for the spin. Despite having been a one-sided, unfair and needlessly over-secretive process, it has produced a damning report, cataloging the many, many ways that our government agencies, CSIS and the RCMP were complicit in the detention and torture of Canadian citizens. Read my op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen today.