On trying to keep secrets

If there's any justice at all, this announcement will result in the Arar report making a splash in the thick of the next federal election campaign. But don't count on it, even if the timing of the Gomery report is just right:

A public report on the Maher Arar affair will be delayed until next March, largely because of haggling over how much of the evidence ought to remain secret on national security grounds.

Paul Cavalluzzo, chief counsel to the inquiry headed by Justice Dennis O'Connor, said Wednesday that nobody realized, when work started last year, how arduous a task it would be to balance security concerns with the public's right to know.

"The commission had little appreciation of how much information would be subject to national security confidentiality claims," Cavalluzzo told a news conference...

O'Connor, who finished hearing the bulk of testimony this week, had hoped to deliver an interim report by the end of the year. He's now aiming at March 31, 2006.

It's not entirely clear from the article whether the change is more a result of the commission failing to anticipate how sensitive the information would be, or whether it's simply a matter of the government seeking to suppress more of it than expected. But even if all the information doesn't end up being released, at the very least the final report should give the best possible summary as to how much and what type of information has been subject to the claimed confidentiality. The mere invocation of the "war on terror" shouldn't insulate any government (including our own) from justifying its actions.

Unfortunately, it appears that it'll be possible for the Liberals to avoid most electoral consequences if they choose to do so. The story notes that the government could go to court in an attempt to challenge O'Connor's conclusions as to what information should be disclosed and what should remain public. That means that if anything in the planned report is particularly damaging to the Liberals' image, there'll be a ready means to make sure that it isn't released until after an election...no matter how far out of his way O'Connor goes to ensure that sensitive information isn't included in the report. (On the flip side, the government can also avoid any challenge if the report exonerates the ministers responsible.)

As Cavalluzzo points out, there is a chance for public pressure to prevent any delays in the release of the report. And that pressure should be directed toward O'Connor as well, to make sure that we know just how complicit Liberal MPs were in the rendition of Canadians before the electorate decides whether they're still trusted in government.