Silencing dissent

Local Liberal candidate paid the price for displeasing Harper government

Liberal candidate Peter Tinsley (left) with leader Michael Ignatieff in Belleville in January.

Peter Tinsley is watching events in Ottawa with particular interest these days. He has an acute understanding of what happens when the Harper government doesn’t like the advice it is getting from its public servants.

Tinsley was head of the Military Police Complaints Commission for four years, investigating, among other things, the treatment of Afghan detainees handed over to local authorities in that war-ravaged country. It was a story that shocked and dismayed many Canadians. The Harper government, however, chose not to renew Tinsley’s contract at the end of 2009. Since then the story has largely disappeared from the headlines.

Now Tinsley has enter the political arena for the first time in his esteemed military and public service career, in part to take on a government that he sees as “destructive of administrative law in this country.”

Tinsley will run as the Liberal candidate for Prince Edward-Hastings in the next federal election, which could come as soon as May. He resides in Prince Edward County.

Currently the Harper administration is under fire for altering a recommendation from a government agency to fund an aid organization—seemingly to make it appear the agency supported the government’s decision to withdraw funding. Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda first said she didn’t know who altered the document, then said she had made the change. The opposition is calling for the minister to be fired.

But Tinsley says the problem goes much deeper than one minister. He suggests the Prime Minister’s office has sought to undermine or silence a number of public appointees who have disagreed with the government.

It is a growing list: Linda Keen was fired from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission after she insisted that a reactor at Chalk River should close for a safety upgrade. Chief Statistician Munir Sheikh resigned last year after Industry Minister Tony Clement created the impression the bureaucrat was onside with the government’s decision to abandon the long-form census.

The Tories dropped Paul Kennedy, chair of the Commission of Public Complaints against the RCMP, after Kennedy got in a public scrap with the government over more independent oversight powers for the commission.

The Harper government attacked Richard Colvin, deputy head of security and intelligence at Canada’s embassy in the U.S., after the public servant exposed a cover-up of the abuse of Afghan prisoners transferred to local authorities.

Tinsley says the Harper government’s actions have put a “chill” on the public appointee community, which endangers the impartiality and fairness of this country’s many quasijudicial agencies, including the Parole Board, the Immigration and Refugee Board, and the boards that govern employment insurance, pensions and labour regulation.

“If you put people into appointments to regulatory bodies based upon who they know and their political leaning,” said Tinsley, “average people may ask themselves if they are getting a fair shake.”

Tinsley finished a 28-year career in the Armed Services as the prosecutor for crimes of murder and torture by Canadian Forces members in Somalia. He practised law in Belleville for several years before being appointed by the Harris government as director of Ontario’s then-troubled Special Investigations Unit.

In 2003 he led prosecutions of war crimes in Kosovo under the auspices of the United Nations. Later he served a similar role in Sarjevo under the Dayton Accord peace treaty.

It was during this assignment that Tinsley was called to take on the role of the head of the Military Police Complaints Commission. Tinsley served in this role for four years but was advised that his leadership of the commission would be allowed to expire before its probe of Afghan prisoner torture was completed.

“I was disappointed I wasn’t allowed to complete the work I thought was significant,” said Tinsley. “Open and accountable were principles upon which the Harper government came into office.”

In fact the Conservative government introduced the Accountibility Act, which included mechanisms to prevent government meddling in the business of its regulatory agencies—but these provisions have never been implemented, said Tinsley.

Some argue that the public service has become politicized and that the Harper government is readjusting the ideological balance in these regulartory functions.

“Where is the proof of the ideological bent they are reacting against?” retorted Tinsley. “Or is it that anyone who doesn’t agree with them must have a different ideology? It is horrifying.”