Colvin Barred from Giving Documents to Committee

Kate Yule
Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The federal government is blocking former diplomat Richard Colvin from handing over documents to a special Commons committee probing allegations of Afghan torture.

The ban comes one day after Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised that the committee would get ‘all legally-available’ documents that it would need to carry out its investigation.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay says the government will produce the documents, but says the records must be screened before they get to MPs. He adds that anything connected with a national security issue will have to be vetted.

Justice Department lawyers have told Colvin that testimony before Parliament is not seen as exempt from national security provisions of the Canada Evidence Act.

It’s the same argument the Harper government made to the Military Police Complaints Commission, which was looking into the same issue. The government took a year to censor and hand over records to the watchdog agency.