Expert advice
by Jim, 26 January 2008
The Manley report says what I hoped it would. Canada should stay in Kandahar, in both a military and development role. And our NATO allies should send another thousand soldiers too.
I’ve printed up a couple of copies and started circulating them to friends who still have doubts about Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. I’m going to add on the recent article by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who is dismayed by calls to withdraw the UN mandated troops.
I must admit though, reading and listening to the critics of the report, I do think they have raised one interesting point: not about the substance, but the process. Oddly enough, the panel which Manley chaired implicitly made a similar complaint in the report itself, about the way our Conservative Prime Minister has treated the issue, as a political football.
It is clear from previous writings that John Manley, a former Liberal cabinet minister, went into the panel’s investigation with certain opinions about the just and necessary nature of the Afghan mission, and that those opinions were confirmed in the panel’s conclusions. That doesn’t bother me. The interviews the panel did in Afghanistan and Canada, and the submissions they requested and considered, indicate they did a reasonable job, as part of their larger task, of testing previously held convictions. Check out the panel’s website.
But the emphasis last Fall by Prime Minister Harper, on the need for an independent and non-partisan review, left many with the impression that a jury was being empaneled. This was reinforced by Harper putting the parliamentary debate on hold while the panel did its job, as if a trial were in progress.
NDP advisor Michael Byers told the radio program As it Happens (Jan 23, part 2) that not only was the process unfair because Manley was biased, but that Byers himself would have been unqualified to serve on the panel, because he supported his party’s call for immediate withdrawal. He thought the chairman and panel members should have been impartial, and initially without opinion on the matters before them.
Now what Harper actually did was call for expert advice from several former politicians and diplomats. Experts are supposed to have opinions, as well as the ability to modify them as more information becomes available. Experts may testify at trials, but they don’t get to play judge or jury.
It is the opinion of Harper’s experts that he is failing to provide the leadership needed for the success of the mission. He asked, and he was told. It is not enough to go through the motions of setting up an non-partisan panel. The Prime Minister has to stop playing partisan politics with Afghanistan. And he has to personally take charge of explaining the mission to Canadians.
The panel found no reason or justification for ending the mission by February 2009. This is embarrassing to Liberal Party leader Stéphane Dion, who has adopted that date as a line in the sand. But it was Harper who effectively set this arbitrary cutoff point, in May of 2006, through a parliamentary resolution “extending” the mission, a motion clearly intended to divide the Liberal caucus.
Deadlines notwithstanding, there is broad agreement between the Liberals and Conservatives on the goals of the Afghan mission. The Prime Minister should admit that, in hindsight, February 2009 was a mistake, and ask Dion to reconsider his own position, proposing a united front on this one issue. Dion, after stumbling in his initial reaction to the report, (he hadn’t read it) has indicated that he might be open to a new approach.
If Harper can go to a Liberal like John Manley for advice, why can’t he ask a Liberal to serve in his cabinet at Defence or Foreign Affairs, or a least on the cabinet level committee that the panel recommends take over coordination of the mission? This is after all a minority parliament, and likely to remain one after the next election.
As much as I applaud the panel’s report I think it would have been better if the Prime Minister had kept it confidential and simply acted on its recommendations. He should be the one making the case John Manley has so ably expressed.
Of course if Harper knew how to rise above politics he wouldn’t have needed the panel’s advice in the first place.
Saturday 26 January 2008 at 4:15
Some very interesting observations, Jim.
A couple of quibbles.
It would have been impossible to find anyone to undertake this task who were “initially without opinion on the matters before them” if it’s grownups you’d be wanting.
It is similarly impossible to find conservatives capable of sufficiently waging the political war required in this matter, because they are conservatives, and they don’t have words in their lexicon sufficient to the discussion. Conservatives are by their nature ill-suited to argue for anyone’s liberation, let alone the liberation of some of the planet’s poorest people on the far side of the globe.
Harper certainly cannot do it. That’s why he called in a Liberal. I’ve never been convinced that Harper really believes in this mission anyway. And to be fair to him, February 2009 was less his mistake than simply the end-term of Canada’s management of the Kandahar PRT.
Liberals are little better, but at least they can mount offensive polemics arising from liberal traditions. Manley’s address in his opening press conference was one of the most eloquent defences of liberal internationalism I have ever heard. For all I wold object to him and his ideas, he gets it.
It grieves me to say about Mike Byers (I still consider him friend)that he is participating in the orchestration of distraction and obfuscation and deconstruction of the provenance of sentences in the Manley panel report, especially those sentences relating to the will of the Afghan people, because he can’t face the content of those sentences, and can only speak without blushing about them if he monkeys about with semantics.
This serves his purpose, which is to cloud the objective reality of Afghan public opinion, which derives from readily-available empirical data, and which is wholly contrary to his view, and which also stands in such stark contrast to the views de tous les stoppistes a notre paye.
The majority Afghan opinion, far from being backward, is more progressive, and more “liberal” even, than that of Canada’s troops-out bourgeoisie, embedded as they mostly are in the leafy Bolivarian republics of universities and other such fashionable neighborhoods where the once-socialist NDP now feverishly toils to locate its support base.
And I expect you don’t really think Harper could have kept Manley’s panel secret so I won’t say more about that.
In the end, I think the biggest problem in all these debates is they are thought experiments that substitute objective reality with abstract theoretics or whateveryouwanttocallit.
Canadian working people are winning the war in Kandahar. They need more and better allies to finish the job is all.
Saturday 26 January 2008 at 16:57
A very interesting post.
But the incompetence of the Harper government – and Canadian politicians in general – goes much further than Afghanistan.
Jim refers to the government’s use and abuse of experts. Perhaps he or Terry could comment on the case of the Chalk River reactor, and the sacking of Nuclear Safety Commission chief Linda Keen.
From what I understand, a senior public servant did her job properly, and closed down a nuclear reactor that had maintenance checks revealed had been operating for 17 months without the required backup cooling pumps. Parliament and government didn’t approve of this decision, as Chalk River produces more than half the world’s supply of medical isotopes, and closing the reactor led to an immediate shortage of the materials. Parliament overruled Keen’s decision, and the government promptly sacked the NSC head, saying she “was prepared to put people’s lives at risk”.
Not only that, but natural resources minister Gary Lunn has rewritten the contract of employment of Keen’s successor, and introduced a blatant conflict of interest between nuclear safety and protecting the supply of medical isotopes.
It’s a complete mess, and the government says simply that it is protecting the interests of Canada, Inc., whose nuclear customers include China, India and Pakistan. Even I – who as a Brit am thoroughly used to hypocritical behaviour from domestic politicians – am shocked by this.
Saturday 26 January 2008 at 17:05
Thanks Terry. I can see I haven’t been clear about a couple of points. And that we have a different assessment on others.
Byers comment on As It Happens amazed me. It was like suggesting no scientist serve on the IPCC who has formed an opinion on climate change. I agree with you that it was absurd and that he knows better.
On the other hand my morning paper tells me that Harper says he is not yet ready to respond to the report, and that his decision will not be based on polls. He’s playing judge, taking his time on the sentencing report.
I’m looking I suppose for a Canadian version of Winston Churchill. What we have is a Conservative version of Jean Chrétien, a spin meister.
And I find all of this as more evidence that party politics poison everything.
Saturday 26 January 2008 at 17:33
Re Chalk River, I became aware of the problem listening to patients in our local cancer clinic, while my sister was undergoing chemo.
I thought the government and parliament made a difficult but correct call in ordering the reactor back into operation. But the firing of Keen just before she was scheduled to testify before a parliamentary committee stinks.
Who would want to be a regulator in Canada after this?
Saturday 26 January 2008 at 18:14
Jim - I hope your sister is responding well to treatment.
That reactor was operating illegally, and parliament/government ordered it back into operation before dealing with the problem. Keen didn’t close down the reactor for good; she ordered it shut down temporarily until the legally-required pumps were installed.
With talk of new nuclear build as a way of dealing with carbon dioxide emissions, we have to ensure that the industry operates safely, and that those running it play by the rules. Nuclear has a very bad public image, and what has occurred with Chalk River in Canada will have knock-on effects elsewhere. It’s grossly irresponsible.
Saturday 26 January 2008 at 19:35
“I’m looking I suppose for a Canadian version of Winston Churchill.”
I’d be more than content with some of the Red Tories among our comrades in the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee. Two former Progressive Conservative federal cabinet ministers - Flora MacDonald and John Fraser, for instance. John is an old and dear friend, if you can believe that. We’ve been in quite a few scrapes together, almost always on the same side, and a more ferocious and principled fighter you would not meet in a day’s walk. Best Speaker of the House that Parliament ever had as well.
Saturday 26 January 2008 at 19:51
Francis, you’re right, as far as I know. How the operator and ministry officials allowed this to happen is the scandal.
My understanding from hearing a few news reports is that Keen was just doing her job and is being scapegoated. I don’t fault her for forcing the issue.
But I was still relieved to hear the plant was back in production.
Opposition MPs who voting in favour of the emergency legislation said they did so because the issue was improvements to back up systems, not defects in the plant equipment.
Monday 28 January 2008 at 6:14
Terry,
Are you in Kabul? I am going up to Mazar on Saturday but around until then if you still want to meet.
Wednesday 30 January 2008 at 5:22
Conor: Nope. Still in Canada.
I’ll contact you another way. Someone there you should meet.