Canada Government Refuses to Clarify on Iraq Mission, Speaker’s Integrity ‘Questioned’

The Canada government refused to answer questions regarding its involvement in the U.S.-led mission in the Middle East against the Islamic State. This apparently infuriated the opposition in the House of Commons during a questioning session on Tuesday.

While Canada is scheduled to have a 30-day mission in Iraq, Stephen Harper's government is not willing to clarify when exactly the mission is going to end. NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair questioned the integrity of Speaker Andrew Scheer. According to Mulcair, the government even refused to clarify when the 30-day mission had actually started. While Harper was not present in the Question Period on Tuesday, Ontario MP Paul Calandra - Harper's parliamentary secretary - replied to Mulcair's queries on the Iraq mission.

Calandra, however, dodged the Iraq question and started talking about Israel instead, The Globe and Mail reported. "I can understand the confusion. We are in the Middle East and under the I's, but we're talking about Iraq," was Mulcair's reaction. When he asked another similar question, Calandra apparently dodged it as well. Mulcair asked the speaker to act as the "arbiter" and "enforce the rules on relevancy" of the replies the government was giving to the opposition's queries.

According to CBC News, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird as well as multiple other government officials earlier said that the 30-day mission had begun on Sept 5. However, the Conservative government was apparently unwilling to declare it formally in the House. Mulcair's third attempt to get an answer from Calandra about the Iraq mission failed because the latter once against started talking about some other issue. Mulcair apparently lost his patience and questioned the integrity of the speaker. He said that the speaker's silence despite Calandra's "irrelevant" replies did not "speak favourably about" the neutrality of the speaker in the House. Scheer eventually got pro-active in the House. His action was, however, not to bring government representative on track but to disallow Mulcair to continue asking his questions further. The speaker moved to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau who started talking about an entirely different topic.

Conservative MP James Bezan clarified the reporters about the issue which Calandra dodged in the House. He confirmed that Canada's mission in Iraq had started on Sept 5.

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au