Liberal senator says Harper government is trying to stifle dissent

Last Updated: Friday, October 20, 2006 | 1:30 PM ET

CBC News

A Liberal senator defended a recent trip to Dubai by members of a Senate committee, saying Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government may be drawing attention to its expenses as a way to undermine the committee's work.

"We have a real sense of concern that there is an organized attempt somewhere out there to stifle dissent," Senator Colin Kenny told reporters in Ottawa Friday.

"There seems to be an organized effort to try to discredit the work that we are doing and we believe that this is part of it."

Members of the Senate standing committee on national security and defence were supposed to travel to Afghanistan on a fact-finding mission after stops in London, Rotterdam and Dubai. More than 2,000 Canadian troops are part of a NATO mission in Afghanistan.

The trip cost more than $140,000, but Kenny said the amount was budgeted, the trip was approved and the committee itself will likely either come under budget on the trip or spend the amount allotted for it.

A recent report by CTV News accused four senators of spending $30,000 on a posh hotel in Dubai when they were unable to enter Afghanistan as part of the trip.

Kenny said Canadian military officials, including Gen. Rick Hillier, advised the committee when they were in London that the situation was too unstable for them to enter the country.

The report alleged the senators spent $500 US per night on the Dubai hotel. The committee has said the rooms cost about $300 Canadian.

Investigating port security

Kenny said the trip was legitimate, given that the committee was investigating port security in London, Rotterdam and Dubai, and the senators stayed longer than planned in Dubai because they could not get flights out of the United Arab Emirates when they wanted because they were there in the week leading up to the holy month of Ramadan.

He said the reporter who did the story was "used" by representatives in the government. He said the senators stayed in a relatively small room and did not "lie by the pool" as suggested in the story.

"You showed pictures of places of where we did not stay," he said. "It was a gotcha story."

Kenny said he thinks the government may be "uncomfortable" with the committee because, among other things, it has found out that funds from the Canadian International Development Agency are not flowing into Afghanistan as planned for rebuilding schools, hospitals and bridges.

The committee recently heard from a witness that CIDA stopped the spending last April as violence involving Taliban militants escalated and Kenny is on the record as saying that the funding delays are putting the lives of Canadian soldiers at risk.

"Clearly, the government does not like what we are doing. The government is clearly uncomfortable with us. We are raising issues that are causing concern," he said.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has called the trip a "junket dressed up as a parliamentary business."

John Williamson, federal director of the federation, has called for Kenny's resignation.