Fighting Fire With Retardant

"What this amounts to is a process to violate the law.  The prohibition on the use of information derived from torture is absolute."  Micheal Vonn, B.C. Civil Liberties Association

Um, perhaps not. 

That, to begin with a directive was issued at the behest of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to ensure that Canada's internal Canadian Security Intelligence Service  be vigilant that material that appears suspect in that it might have been obtained through torture, and that such material should be carefully weighed and that it should be ascertained whether it had indeed been induced through torture seems to read that government has taken upon itself the responsibility to ensure it does not violate strictures against torture-derived evidence.

After all, steps were taken in the wake of media news that evidence was being accepted and analyzed and utilized in the past that might have been obtained through the use of torture, to ensure that this not be fully countenanced.  Because of the ministerial order, CSIS set about forming an Information Sharing Evaluation Committee whose purpose it is to ensure that in exchanging information with friendly states' security apparatus, Canada would avoid using evidence illegally obtained.

If and when at all possible, under most circumstances, but barring some, perhaps.

Moreover, CSIS would deliberate carefully before agreeing to send information to foreign agencies whose governments and institutions might be suspected of using torture as a means of extracting indictable evidence.  On a number of occasions, post 9-11, this is precisely what had occurred; information was shared with human-rights-abusing regimes, involving the safety and security of Canadians whose loyalty was held to be suspect.

Members of this committee were tasked with carefully examining databases, consulting human rights reports and taking the time to weigh circumstances of each case placed before them for consideration before arriving at a decision whether or not to deem evidence admissible under these rules.  In addition to which the director of CSIS would also make the final decision if and when the committee determines whether data may have derived from torture or forwarding material to an ally might result in abuse.

The instructions that were issued setting out the details and the care to be taken to ensure that no violations resulted from lack of care and attention to fine examination and conclusion-reaching were clearly meant to identify "substantial risk" that sharing data might result in custody abuse, making Canada an accessory by default to that abuse.

As careful as governments would like to be in assessing the value of either accepting or rejecting information that might be tainted by having been obtained by morally objectionable and human-rights-abusing techniques, there would be times when to reject information whose warning and apprehension value might be critical to the well-being and protection of government and citizens, sometimes the choices are narrowed by critical emergencies.

While opposition MPs and civil liberties advocates see the issue in stark black and white, those same MPs would be the first to deep-six the value of their personal moral/ethical convictions if in government and responsible for the outcome of critical scenarios.  These are not casual decisions being made but deeply thought-out and difficult to arrive at because of the conflicting issues at play.

Quite simply, there are times - and they would have to be exceptional times of great import with respect to their critical nature and potential impact on the lives of people - when teeth must be gritted and unwelcome decisions made by people with foresight and responsibility.