Afghan Detainee Diversion

This isn't the first time former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci has been asked to weigh the tension between publicly releasing documents and national security interests. In fact, Iacobucci has already headed an inquiry into torture allegations and released a formal report. I found this passage applicable to the questions he will now face:

National security confidentiality review. In preparing a version of the report suitable for public disclosure, Inquiry counsel and I considered the constraints imposed by the Terms of Reference (which required that I must take all steps necessary to prevent the disclosure of information subject to national security confidentiality), section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act (which prohibits disclosure of information that would be injurious to international relations, national defence or national security), and the factors identified by Mr. Justice Simon Noël in Canada (Attorney General) v. Canada (Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar).

With these factors in mind, I engaged in the national security review process with a view to providing the public with as complete as possible an account of the actions of Canadian officials and my findings in respect of those actions. With one exception, I am satisfied that the information contained in the confidential version of my report, but omitted from the public version, is properly subject to national security confidentiality. The information that forms the exception is, in my view, directly relevant to my mandate and should be disclosed to the public.

However, the responsible Minister is of the opinion that disclosure of this information would be injurious to national security, national defence, and/or international relations. If it is ultimately determined that further information can be publicly disclosed, I intend to take the necessary steps to supplement the public version of my report...

There remains certain information that bears directly on my mandate that I believe can and should be included in the public version of my report. However, the responsible Minister is of the opinion that disclosure of this information would be injurious to national security, national defence, and/or THE INQUIRY PROCESS 61
international relations.

In this case Iacobucci deferred to the Minister in question, when deciding whether to publicly release certain documents. One will also note, Nicholson quoted VERBATUM the bolded portion today in the H of C.

An interesting passage on blacked out documents:

In preparing the public version of my report, I chose not to use the technique of indicating where information has been omitted through black-outs or ellipsis marks. In my view, doing so would have impaired the intelligibility and coherence of the public report, particularly since, in many instances, the best solution to a national security confidentiality concern was to summarize the information or convey its essence in a different way, rather than omit specific words or phrases. The text of the public report includes approximately 20% fewer words than the text of the confidential report (excluding footnotes).

I'd invite others to review the massive report, but I suspect one will find the Conservative government has a VERY CLEAR understanding of how Iacobucci views classified documents in the context of Ministerial opposition and/or national security considerations. In other words, there is NO way Iacobucci is chosen, unless his past opinion and record doesn't denote some sympathy towards the government's current stance.

I'll leave it to the legal beavers to decide if my interpretation is correct.