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‘If he says no then we have contempt of Parliament’

The Canadian Press, Globe, Star, CBC and CTV report from today’s unofficial hearings of the Afghanistan committee. The Star’s Allan Woods wraps the day’s discussion thusly.

Mendes, one of the country’s top constitutional scholars, said Parliament’s power exceeds that of the various national security laws that have been used to censor government memos and diplomatic cables describing who was warned about possible war crimes violations going back to early 2006, when Canadian soldiers moved to Kandahar province.

That leaves MPs with two paths forward: they can ask the Supreme Court of Canada to rule on their right to access the information, a process that could take years; or they can invoke a rarely used power to censure, expel and even imprison any member of the House of Commons for contempt…

Opposition MPs are taking the advice seriously and will decide in the coming weeks how to move ahead.

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