I see your two Jacks and I raise you an Iacobbuci!

The NDP have rejected appointing an independent arbiter to oversee the release of classified documents relating to the abuse of Afghan detainees who were transferred from Canadian custody during the early years of Canada's mission in Kandahar. According to the G&M,

NDP defence critic Jack Harris said his party wants MPs to serve as the filter for what should be released or withheld.  “We want Parliamentary oversight, not a proxy.”

The NDP appears to favour a two-stage process where a select group of Parliamentarians screen the tens of thousands of pages of documents, deciding what censored passages can be released. Under this scenario any new freshly released information would be funneled to the Special Commons committee on Afghanistan."

This would be a workable solution if and only if the screening committee had top notch legal help in determining which document involved national security and which didn't. (The G&M quote unnamed "legal scholars" who agree that independent assessment is needed to to provided the process legitimacy.)  If Jack Layton or Jack Harris think that MPs alone could sort out the 10,000+ files without partisan politics interfering then the two 'Dippers are 'trippin. In this case, the only measure for deciding to release documents would be how politically damaging the documents would be to the government (assuming the committee reflects the current division of the House and the Opposition has the upper hand).

Since a lack of trust among MPs got us into this mess, a lack of trust won't get us out. Legitimate, independent help is required to re-establish trust between MPs and between Canadians and their Parliament on this matter.

The proper role for MPs is in creating the rules under which classified documents are vetted and who does the vetting and then reviewing the documents as they are released. This is a more sensible solution

To support this goal, Frank Iaccobuci's mandate ought to be changed so that he reports to Parliament through the non-partisan Privy Council Office. Giles Duceppe strenuously objects to Iaccobuci as being Harper's Man and therefore tainted. But if you can't trust a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, who can you trust?

Iaccobuci, or suitable alternative, and his chosen legal experts could be fully vetted by Parliament before they began work. Iaccobuci would only rule on what documents should remain classified. The standard for determining what was and what wasn't "national security" could be created by MPs and applied to the process of reviewing documents to make it more transparent. Documents that remain classified would be passed to a group of select MPs who are sworn to secrecy and meet in camera while those documents that fail to meet the standard would be released to the House committee monitoring Afghanistan. In short, set up a legitimate third party to decided what remains classified and what doesn't and let MPs do the work of reviewing the results.

This solution is in keeping with the spirit of what the NDP has proposed but relies on trustworthy third parties who remain outside the grist mill of politics.It's also the solution that  comes closest to a judicial inquiry but still allows MPs to decide the rules and control the process.

MPs on both sides of the House created this mess, they ought to clean it up rather than pass it off. On this, the Two Jacks and I agree

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