April 26, 2007 - Watching the news last night has propelled me to break my silence regarding two specific issues.

Rarely have I witnessed a national Minister of Defence more bumbling and unclear in his messaging that this Gordon O'Connor. First, he spends days on end defending the decision to hand over suspects to the Afghan authorities, asserting that no abuse was taking place (this is after spending the past year claiming that Red Cross officials were closely monitoring the situation, a claim that was soundly denied by the organization last month).

Then, he states that he has "the personal assurance of the leader of the human-rights commission in Kandahar and the national level" that any abuse will be reported to Canada (a claim soon rebuffed by Amir Mohammed Ansari, the commission's chief investigator in Kandahar, who replied "We have an agreement with the Canadians, but we can't monitor these people," due to the fact even though they have legal permission to visit prisoners inside the NDS prison, the Afghan authorities "don't allow it."

Throughout all of this, it is revealed that Canada, unlike many of its allies, doe not have a prisoner transfer agreement with Afghanistan that allows for the automatic right to check on individuals handed over by its forces.

Then, O'Connor has to be cornered in an elevator to get details (which he does not provide) on the fact that now, all of a sudden, Canada has negotiated an agreement with the governor of Kandahar which will allow Canadian officials to check on the status of detainees transferred by Canadian troops.

This guy is an unmitigated disaster, and should either face the Rona Ambrose treatment from Stephen Harper, or quit politics and go back to selling guns as a munitions lobbyist.

The other thing I wanted to comment about was the story that the government plans to ban all incandescent lightbulbs by 2012. On CTV, they had an official from the David Suzuki foundation commenting that light bulbs only account for 1.5% of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions, and that it was a piece-meal measure.

Now I have yet to get a real handle on the Conservatives' green plan which will be announced today, and how feasible it really is, but I will say this: as far as I'm concerned, if 1.5% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by 90% through such a minor change in the kind of lightbulb we use, I consider that to be a pretty substantial type of measure. The simple act of changing your lightbulbs can reduce almost 1.5% of total emissions - now, that doesn't seem like a drop in the bucket to me.

I often wonder about the communications strategies that environmental organizations seem to consistently adhere to.

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