Diana1976
-1p96 comments posted · 0 followers · following 0
13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - More ado about Oda · 0 replies · +7 points
13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - The Oda ado: overblown? · 0 replies · +5 points
A Minister can always overrule the advice he/she receives from experts in a Department of government. That's why her signature is required.
If he/she overrules, she takes responsibility.
The Minister does not lie about the Department's advice. Seems likely, in this case, she was acting on orders from the PM, because we know how tightly he controls the Ministers, right down to talking points. They sound like robots in Question Period.
The same thing happened in a Statistics Canada case not long ago. In that case the head of the Department resigned because this sneaky, lying government misrepresented his advice, and pretended they were acting on it. Good for him. Too bad all public servants didn't have the guts he did. So many of them, under this government, have just given in. But not them all. A lot of them have been fired, spoken out, and I think that will continue.
13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - More ado about Oda · 4 replies · +17 points
But, in time they'll wake up.
13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - More ado about Oda · 0 replies · +21 points
He was a hero in my eyes.
13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Where are they now? · 0 replies · +1 points
You can always find examples of other parties behaving this way on occasion, but for the Harper Party, it's a matter of policy.
But is all that just about "style"? I don't think so. People who act like that can't be trusted except by those who imagine it's about hiding an agenda they hope to see implemented if only this group can manipulate voters into giving them a majority.
13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Where are they now? · 0 replies · +1 points
Not even the judge at Guantanamo said Khadr wasn't qualified under the law, which he obviously was, based on its plain language.
By the time the issue came before the judge, years after Khadr's capture, he quoted a comment from a member of the committee who developed the law but he said the decision to prosecute was a government policy matter and not his decision, which is true, and he said, as far as jurisdiction was concerned, the Military Commissions Act superseded the treaty, and it had no lower age limit. In other words, under that infamous Act the US could charge 8 year olds if it wanted.
See the US Defence Department web site - Omar Khadr - two sections on Child Soldier Protocol - trial documents
13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - The Commons: These fle... · 0 replies · +1 points
....Contrary to the plain language of the law, the Gtmo judge who said no so thing (the law was superseded by the MCA passed years after he was captured and it has no lower age limit on who can be prosecuted) and the representative of the UN program on "child soldiers".
13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - The Commons: These fle... · 0 replies · +1 points
13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - The Commons: These fle... · 0 replies · +1 points
Would that be the same "Justice" Minister who responded to the Supreme Court"s declaration that Canada was participating in the illegal treatment of a Canadian citizen, contrary to principles of fundamental justice, Canadian and international law, by sending a note to the US asking them not to use illegally obtained Canadian evidence in his trial, a tiny part of the evidence obtained illegally by Americans at their notorious prisons of Bagram and Gtmo?
Is that the same "Justice" Minister who announced publically his government didn't even care if they got a response to the note?
I sure hope they don't represent the best we can do on human rights.
13 years ago @ Macleans.ca - Who is the real Omar K... · 0 replies · 0 points
Khadr "confessed" to charges that boil down to fighting the American military in a war in a foreign country of which he was a resident, while not being deemed by the US to be entitled to "prisoner of war" status under Geneva.
Even if Khadr read the international laws of war before deciding not to surrender to the American military he wouldn't have found that "war crime" and nor would he have found it defined anywhere as "terrorism". Legal experts have been arguing about that for 8 years.
It doesn't seem unreasonable that he thought his parents and the people he grew up around most of his life were right about the validity of the war cause. Most 15 year olds in that circumstance would.