Tories making 'mockery' of Parliament by withholding Afghan documents: legal expert

[thompo69]

Correct me if I am wrong but does a law not have to be passed by parliment , be reviewed by the senate and committees and go through three readings before being proclaimed into law by the Queens representative? Or has the parlimentary system in canada changed while I was away yesterday?

The other point is how does one law supercede another?

Yes, that is how legislation is passed. However, the order for the production of papers is not legislation, but an order of the House exercising one of its ancient constitutional privileges. That power belongs to each house of parliament separately, and can by exercised by each house individually.

As to your second question of how does one law supersede another, it's a far more complex issue. Some legislation will explicitly state that it supersedes others, some have been deemed by the courts to be quasi-constitutional in nature and thus given preferred status. However, in this case we have a conflict between the exercise of a constitutional power and simple legislation -- constitution wins.

 

[oldjones]

The only recent pol I can imagine admiring their dictatorial impulses qould be Jean Chretien, who was skilled enoughat politics he never needed to resort to such brute tactics. Certainly it betrays every democratic principle of the REform Party.

This would be the same PM who shut down a judicial inquiry because it was getting to close to the govt .

Documents that refer to operations and operational paterns and deployments do not have a best before, or do you think having to reorganize the operational status of a brigade while in operations is a good idea?

Did I miss somethin g diod the government strike an inquiry on this subject while I was having my hair done?
Not trusting the parliment of canada to keep its mouths shut about secured information when there are political points to be made is a good thing. They cvould not resist the oportunty to score points .

Sorry! They are OUR documents; it's OUR government; it's answerable to OUR Parliament. It's absurd to imagine that OUR sons—and daughters—will all die in those operations just because a particular piece of paper once got a Secret stamp, and an MP was allowed to see it years later.

We've conducted wars before—much bigger and more dangerous ones—and other governments with less dictatorial tendencies have somehow managed to maintain secrecy and keep Parliament informed. Isn't that why the Leader of the Opposition is a Privy Councillor?

The enquiry you seemed to have ignored—love your hair BTW, well worth the effort—was that of DND's duly appointed, fully security cleared Military Police complaints commission. Had OUR government done its job and cooperatively dealt with its need to know, balancing that against whatever operational need for continued still exists, by now the opposition would be rehashing cold porridge. And we'd likely have MPs at work, earning their pay instead of getting their hair done for Olympic photo ops.

BTW I don't hear either the military or their civilian bosses are advancing the 'present danger to troops in the field' canard.

I note your fascination w/ Chrétien's failings. Are you proposing him as a model for Harpo? Or as an excuse?

 

[landscaper]

Any party, if left in power long enough, starts to feel entitled to be there, and starts to abuse the power that has been given to it. This is why it is so important that we uphold basic democratic principles, regardless of politics. If it were a Liberal government of an NDP government refusing to obey an order of Parliament I would be just as angry. To me it's a sign that Harper has been in power so long that he is now taking Parliament and voters for granted.

At this point Harper seems to see Parliament as some sort of electoral college, and considers all power to be vested in himself personally. That's dangerous.



Parliament decided that they should be released, and Parliament has the power to make that decision. That order of Parliament declassifies the material. If you think it's a bad decision, if you think it should have remained classified, then don't vote for these guys in the future, just as if you think your elected representaitves pass bad laws you ought not to vote for them again.

It is not just some dude somewhere arguing that it should be released, it's an order authorized by a majority of the elected representatives of the Canadian people.

We elect these guys exactly so that they will make these sorts of decisions on our behalf.

Parliment can not order the government to break the law they are not above the law anymore than you are.

The order of parliment does not declassify material it orders its production to parliment relevenmt to the applicable laws.
Your dodge on the subject of Chretien is interesting.

 

[landscaper]

Yes, that is how legislation is passed. However, the order for the production of papers is not legislation, but an order of the House exercising one of its ancient constitutional privileges. That power belongs to each house of parliament separately, and can by exercised by each house individually.

As to your second question of how does one law supersede another, it's a far more complex issue. Some legislation will explicitly state that it supersedes others, some have been deemed by the courts to be quasi-constitutional in nature and thus given preferred status. However, in this case we have a conflict between the exercise of a constitutional power and simple legislation -- constitution wins.

The production of the papers violates the law concerning the classification of the documents. The parliment can not order teh government to break the law. The coment regarding one law superceding another is based on a new law being enacted that assumes the responsibilities for another law , ie., changing the law regarding murder to include something else as murder( this is just an example) , the older definitions of murder still exist but the new definition expands the charge of murder . The new law would supercede the older law while maintaining the older laws definitions of murder.

 

[landscaper]

Sorry! They are OUR documents; it's OUR government; it's answerable to OUR Parliament. It's absurd to imagine that OUR sons—and daughters—will all die in those operations just because a particular piece of paper once got a Secret stamp, and an MP was allowed to see it years later.

It is entirly possible that operational details could result in the death of someone. The way things are done in specific instances ( call drills) does not change , the details of how , where and which part of a unit will do what could easily cause a death with a secondary explosive placed to effect the positioning of units.

We've conducted wars before—much bigger and more dangerous ones—and other governments with less dictatorial tendencies have somehow managed to maintain secrecy and keep Parliament informed. Isn't that why the Leader of the Opposition is a Privy Councillor?
Yes it has and if the leader of the opposition has indeed seen the documents and they are relavent he could have require a judicial intervention by a cleared judge to determine if the documents are indeed relavent, those judges exist for exactly that reason.
The other side of this is that this is an information war, the information and inteligence is key to opperations , the way and means that
the informatioon is collected is also key. Information relating to who supplied the information or the way it was collected could easily compromise a source or system od collecting information. This war also has the disadvantage of world wide information transfers at the prush of a button. That causes additional headachs.
BTW I don't hear either the military or their civilian bosses are advancing the 'present danger to troops in the field' canard.

The military higher ups will not comment on operational issues , the danger to the troops is real and well known to anybody with the intelect to actually think about it as opposed to scoring political points

Did the govt handle this poorly , yes, is it a war crime no, is it a mockery of parliment , that will be left for the voters to decide.

 

[thompo69]

The production of the papers violates the law concerning the classification of the documents. The parliment can not order teh government to break the law. The coment regarding one law superceding another is based on a new law being enacted that assumes the responsibilities for another law , ie., changing the law regarding murder to include something else as murder( this is just an example) , the older definitions of murder still exist but the new definition expands the charge of murder . The new law would supercede the older law while maintaining the older laws definitions of murder.

You clearly do not understand the operation of parliamentary privilige. The order for the production of papers is the exercise of a CONSTITUTIONAL power. It is not the order that violates the law, it is the law that violates the constitutional powers of the House. The law must conform to the constitution, and when there is a conflict, the constitution wins.

 

[oldjones]

Sorry! They are OUR documents; it's OUR government; it's answerable to OUR Parliament. It's absurd to imagine that OUR sons—and daughters—will all die in those operations just because a particular piece of paper once got a Secret stamp, and an MP was allowed to see it years later.

It is entirly possible that operational details could result in the death of someone. The way things are done in specific instances ( call drills) does not change , the details of how , where and which part of a unit will do what could easily cause a death with a secondary explosive placed to effect the positioning of units

. …edit…

Did the govt handle this poorly , yes, is it a war crime no, is it a mockery of parliment , that will be left for the voters to decide.

As if the only way the enemy was gonna know how we do car drills is by reading Hansard!

If the forces are still doing car drills the same way they were back then, they may need heavens help but they have nothing to fear from documents describing how they did them. The Taliban have been watching. Heck they were participating.

In any case those are not the required documents, now are they? Even if they were, has the government never heard of black magic markers?

What a joke your defence is! Which is nice, because the government's version is tragic and shames them and the Forces they're ducking behind to excuse their anti-democratic reflexes.

What is truly a mockery of parliament is the ignorance not just of its power and privilege in our system, but grade school stubborn unwillingness to even learn how to spell the name.

Done.

 

[fuji]

Parliment can not order the government to break the law they are not above the law anymore than you are.

The order of parliment does not declassify material it orders its production to parliment relevenmt to the applicable laws.
Your dodge on the subject of Chretien is interesting.

Which of the following statements do you disagree with:

1. The Minister has the power to declassify documents

2. Parliament has the power to tell the Minister to declassify documents

3. Parliament has told the Minister to declassify the documents

First off, where is any law being broken? Nowhere.

We don't even need to move on to the second point which is that following a Parliamentary order isn't breaking the law, but that's irrelevant in this case because no law needs "breaking".

 

[fuji]

You clearly do not understand the operation of parliamentary privilige. The order for the production of papers is the exercise of a CONSTITUTIONAL power. It is not the order that violates the law, it is the law that violates the constitutional powers of the House. The law must conform to the constitution, and when there is a conflict, the constitution wins.

Quoted for truth. No act of Parliament removes Parliament's privileges, and all laws are acts of Parliament. Parliament's power can be limited only by a constitutional change involving the consent of multiple provinces and a majority of voters. No mere law can limit it.

 

[fuji]

the danger to the troops is real and well known to anybody with the intelect to actually think about it as opposed to scoring political points

This is bull crap. Operational security is VERY time sensitive so the military encryption systems designed to protect it are generally designed to keep it secret for no more than a few days.

This is commonly explained with an example like this:

The flight plan and targetting information for a fighter bomber along with the codes used to secure its radio communication are considered highly sensitive, classified information, but the military generally uses LOW GRADE encryption technology or sometimes NO encryption to secure this information. In general a capable enemy can intercept and decode these transmissions and eventually decipher the flight plan and targetting information along with the comms between the pilot and central command.

Is that a security threat?

No, because it takes a few days to decode the fighter bomber's communications, but it only takes the fighter bomber a few hours to kill you. After you're dead the information is not so relevant.

There is generally NOTHING in operational information that is valuable to the enemy more than a few weeks after the fact.

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More to the point, though, the people entitled to make this decision, Parliament, have already decided they want it released.