Wednesday, March 31, 2004

CONSISTENTLY INCONSISTENT

I knew it was just a matter of time before this happened and I have been waiting to be able to point it out.

You may recall that in mid January the RCMP searched the home of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Niell looking for links to her source in relation to a story she wrote on Maher Arar. After her house was searched Prime Minster Martin took the highly unusual and almost bizarre step of commenting on the search, from a foriegn country no less. He even went so far as to say that Ms. O'Niell, who was at the time under invesigation by federal police officers, was "clearly not" a criminal.

Yesterday Mohammad Momin Khawaja, an Ottawa resident, was charged with two offences under Canada's Anti-Terrorist Act.

What was the response from the government?

Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan said she was informed of the raids after they occurred on Monday afternoon. She said she could not comment on the investigation because it is part of an ongoing RCMP investigation.

Could not comment because it involves an ongoing RCMP investigation. I'm not disagreeing with the minsters position, I think it's the right one. It would just be nice to have some consistency in these matters from the PM and ministers.

Posted by Matthew @ 2:59 p.m.