Canada’s Conservative government finalized a deal on Tuesday with two opposition parties on the release of sensitive Afghan war documents, ending a political standoff that had risked triggering snap elections.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s shaky grip on power was strengthened by the agreement with the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois, even though another opposition party, the New Democrats, rejected the deal.
The wedge between the opposition parties, which hold a majority of seats in parliament, now assures there will be no election before lawmakers’ summer break, which is scheduled to start next month.
The parties reached a preliminary deal last month, but the details still had to be hammered out.
The top secret files are believed to contain evidence that Canada transferred prisoners to Afghan custody knowing they could be tortured, in violation of Canadian and international law.
A standoff over their release started after the House of Commons passed a motion in December last year ordering the government to produce the files.
The government refused, citing national security concerns, and instead produced tens of thousands of heavily redacted pages.
Under the terms of a deal agreed to by all parties last month, a committee of members of parliament (MP) was to review all documents to determine their relevance to the study of the transfer of Afghan detainees by the Commons committee on the Afghan conflict.
Any documents found to be relevant would be referred to a panel of “expert arbiters” tasked with deciding how to make the information in the documents available to all MPs and to the public without compromising national security.
The latest proposal, said the New Democrats, excludes legal documents and Cabinet records from review.
“New Democrats will not sign the government’s latest proposal on access to Afghan detainee documents because it means Canadians will never learn the truth about torture in Afghanistan,” New Democrat party leader Jack Layton said.
The other parties, the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois, “were willing to accept compromises that we believe would prevent the truth from coming out,” he said.
House Speaker Peter Milliken had ordered the Conservative government and opposition parties to agree to terms for releasing the documents, or he would find the government in contempt of parliament, which might have forced elections.
Liberal MP Ralph Goodale said the proposal “recognizes the right of members of parliament to know and to have information and to use that information to hold the government to account.”
“We also believe that the mechanism put in place through the agreement that has been negotiated will allow us to have access to the information we need in order to shed light on those allegations of torture,” Bloc Quebecois MP Pierre Paquette said.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said on behalf of the government: “I’m pleased it’s worked out.”
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