Andrew Coyne has a funny take on the government’s ever evolving position on the monitoring of Afghan detainees. For those looking for the specific facts, I present them in an easy to understand chronological order. If you understand the following, MENSA should be calling within the next few days.

2006-early 2007: Gordon O’Connor maintains that the Red Cross are monitoring transferred detainees and reporting their findings to Canada.

March 8: Gordon O’Connor admits that the Red Cross does not inform Canada of the treatment of detainees captured by Canadian troops and transferred to Afghan authorities.

March 19: Gordon O’Connor apologizes for misleading the House.

April 23: Amid calls for his resignation, Gordon O’Connor defends himself by “telling Commons that a recent agreement with the human rights commission of Afghanistan guaranteed any detainee abuses would be reported.”

April 24: A front page Globe story reveals that “the Harper government knew from its own officials that prisoners held by Afghan security forces faced the possibility of torture, abuse and extrajudicial killing.” It shows that many of this information had been blacked out in documents.
April 25: The government maintains that it is the AIHRC and not any Canadian organizations who monitor detainees.

April 25: AIHRC says that “we couldn’t go there [to the prisons]”.

April 25: Gordon O’Connor’s elevator scrum reveals that Canada has struck a deal with Afghanistan to allow Canadian officials to monitor detainees “any time they wanted“.

April 25 (later): Peter MacKay is first told of this deal by journalists.

April 26: In QP, Stephen Harper says that there is no signed deal.

April 27: Stockwell Day says that Corrections Canada has made 15 17 trips to prisons to monitor detainees, saying they are there “to see if there are cases of torture“.

April 28: “Urging an end to the “political circus” over Afghan detainees, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Canada says no Canadians, including corrections officers, have monitored treatment of prisoners turned over by Canadian military forces.”

April 29: Stockwell Day tells Question Period that there have been no specific accusations by detainees of torture.

May 1: Stockwell Day says that Correctional Services Canada had been told by 2 detainees that they had been tortured.

May 1: The opposition parties decide to move on to far more important issues – the captaincy of Shane Doan to Team Canada. Stephane Dion calls the Tory silence “shocking”, Ducceppe criticized Harper for not taking a stand on the issue, and Jack Layton said Doan’s captaincy would “cast a shadow” on the team. Elizabeth May says the choice of Doan was akin to Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Nazis.

May 2: Foreign Affairs complains that they were not consulted on Hillier’s 2005 detainee deal.

May 3: Rick Hillier concedes that “perhaps [the deal he signed] was no sufficient”

May 3: The Canadian ambassador signs a new detainee deal.