Manley Afghanistan panel will open website for public submissions

John Manley's Afghanistan panel is setting up a website to take written submissions from the public, the head of a Canadian development group said Saturday.

The panel has said it had no plans for public hearings, but Gerry Barr, president of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, said the website will allow for public input.

Barr and representatives of about a dozen other Canadian aid groups met Manley and his panel on Saturday. They were told an internet site will be running soon and will accept comments and recommendations.

"Plainly, if they put their address on the website and ask for submissions, they're going to get them from the general public," Barr said.

Barr said the aid groups had two hours of lively discussions behind closed doors with Manley and his four fellow committee members.

Manley, a former Liberal cabinet minister and one-time leadership contender, was appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper earlier this month to look at the future of Canada's commitment in Afghanistan.

At the time, Harper said he wanted the panel to consider four options:

• Keep training Afghan troops and police to be self-sustaining when Canadian troops withdraw.
• Focus on reconstruction in Kandahar, with another NATO country taking over security.
• Shift Canadian security and reconstruction to another region of Afghanistan.
• Withdraw the main body of Canada's troops in February 2009.

Barr said he urged Manley and the panel to look beyond those choices.

"The options … that were given to them at the front end all had to do with … the Canadian military in Afghanistan," Barr said.

"We were there to say to them that you need to put in your option category actively the search for a political consensus in Afghanistan, a national peace process and how Canada could support that kind of process."

Barr also said it's important to break perceived linkages between the military and development, which can become intertwined in people's minds.

Manley and his fellow panel members — former broadcaster Pamela Wallin, Derek Burney, former ambassador to Washington and one-time chief of staff to Brian Mulroney, Paul Tellier, former clerk of the privy council and Jake Epp, a former Mulroney cabinet minister — are expected to report by January.

Harper appointed the panel amid a political debate over what Canada should do when the mandate of its current Afghan commitment runs out in February 2009. The Conservatives are leaning to a continuation, while other parties are demanding that the troops come home.