Stockwell Day: Man Without a Clue

It certainly wasn't a coincidence that on the same day the second part of Justice O'Connor's Maher Arar inquiry report came out Stockwell Day pulled a media spotlight coup and finally announced a new inquiry (which he promised in September after the first part of O'Connor's recommendations were released) into the cases of Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin who all claim they were tortured in Syria as well.

It's not that such an inquiry is unwelcome and it is definitely long overdue, but one has to be suspicious of Day's timing for this announcement. The fact that Day did not immediately embrace O'Connor's recomendations this time as he did the last time without hesitation shows a reluctance that is curious and his decision to overshadow O'Connor's work with a distraction leaves me wondering just how committed Day is to oversight of agencies involved in national security concerns.

Furthermore, when Day announced the new inquiry and blasted the previous Liberal government for not initiating it, you certainly got the feeling that Day thinks he's going to win some kind of 'gotcha' political game when the results of these investigations finally come to light. Is he hiding something that we should know about or was he just being his usual, vindictive self?

On Wednesday, Day tried to assure Canadians that what happened to Arar 'would not happen today' even though actual reforms to ensure it doesn't are still brand spanking new. Day is incredibly naive if he actually believes in his own words:

Among the changes to national security protocol are improvements in intelligence sharing.

"There have to be caveats attached to that information that would say, 'All right, here's some evidence about a particular individual, however, there's a caveat to this,' " Day explained. "A caveat is, for instance: 'We have no firm information that this person is involved with terrorist activity.' "

More careful screening of information would allow other intelligence agencies to know "whether this is something that may be of interest, or something that is a fact," he said.

He's kidding, right?

It's interesting to note of course that Day, Harper and Ablonzcy were all quite convinced that Arar was a man with 'terrorist links' despite the lack of evidence, yet Day really thinks that the CIA and FBI will just look at some sort of 'caveat' as a reason to be cautious? Has he even followed what's been going on in the US since September 11 - all of those arrests and so-called terrorist alerts that were bogus and never resulted in charges, let along convictions? The endless imprisonment of 'suspected terrorists' like Canadian teenager Omar Khadr in Gitmo who claims to have been subjected to torture at the hands of his Amercian captors and who, by the way, this Tory government has done absolutely nothing about while claiming to stand up for human rights and justice? Yet Day thinks he can actually trust US intelligence agencies and really believes that the RCMP and CSIS have already got their acts together to the point where they will never make a similar kind of massive mistake again as they did in Arar's case? How incredibly obtuse.