Caroline St. Hilaire

On April 23, 2007, the Globe reported what it had learned from interviews with 30 detainees. Two days later, the paper revealed what the Foreign Affairs department’s own reporting disclosed about torture in Afghanistan. After the premature announcement of a new transfer agreement that week, a new deal was signed on May 3.

In the first few months of 2007, the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan was discussed during 14 sessions of Question Period: February 6, February 12, February 13, February 21, February 27, March 1, March 2, March 19, March 20, March 21, March 22, March 23, March 26 and March 29. It was on the morning of March 19, that Gordon O’Connor apologized to the House for misleading it about the monitoring of detainees by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The NDP’s Joe Comartin, speaking at a Feb. 25 press conference alongside the Bloc’s Vivian Barbot and Liberal MP Dominic Leblanc: “We did not play our proper role in protecting Mr. Khadr’s right. And this press conference … is our signal to the Canadian people, and more importantly, to the Canadian government, that we are not going to remain silent anymore.”Total number of questions asked by the newly unsilent opposition in the three weeks since: Three.The Bloc’s Caroline St. Hilaire asked one question on Feb. 26. Pauline Picard, also of the Bloc, asked the other two questions on Mar. 14.