Canada’s Conservatives Shut Down Parliament, Again


by Keith Jones
WSWS.org
2009-12-31



Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has requested and received from Governor-General Michaëlle Jean an order proroguing or shutting down Canada’s parliament until March 3.


The minority Conservative government’s principal, albeit unstated, reason for proroguing parliament for the second time in twelve calendar months is to prevent further parliamentary hearings into the Canadian state’s complicity in torture.

These hearings, despite the support of all three opposition parties for Canada’s leading role in the counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan, are damaging the public stature of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and disrupting the Canadian elite’s plans to advance their interests through participation in imperialist wars.

Last month, Richard Colvin, a former top Canadian diplomat in Afghanistan, told the House of Commons foreign affairs committee that the government and CAF had ignored and suppressed his repeated warnings that Afghan security forces were abusing and torturing alleged Taliban prisoners—including the hundreds of prisoners whom the CAF transferred to them in 2006 and the first half of 2007. Colvin further testified that most of those handed over by the Canadian military to Afghanistan’s notorious National Directorate of Security were peasants and other ordinary folk caught up in CAF sweeps. “In other words,â€