By Colin Kenny
If you’re a wealthy prince or a jet setting tourist, visiting the Middle East port of Dubai is probably a self-indulgent and relaxing experience. But if you’re a member of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, visiting Dubai can be a real downer.
I was one of four members of the committee to spend a week in Dubai in September. Before we made the visit, our committee had earned a reputation for hard work, serious analysis and tough recommendations on Canadian military and security failings, set out in 15 hard-hitting reports over 5 ½ years.
By the time we got home from Dubai, we were cartoon characters – wastrels scattering taxpayers’ money around a luxury hotel as we whiled away our hours . . . doing what? Nobody ever quite said what we were doing. Playing backgammon? Gambling at the roulette wheels? Frolicking with belly dancers in the pool?
Since we weren’t doing any of those things, the best the “gotcha” media could come up with is that we were “whiling: “passing (time etc.) in a leisurely or interesting manner.”
Part of that dictionary definition applies. While our stay was far from leisurely, it was extremely interesting, if security interests you, which it should.
The Dubai stopover was supposed to be the second leg of a three-leg trip: the first leg to meet with security and intelligence experts in Britain and the Netherlands: the second leg to examine security in Dubai; and the third leg to scrutinize Canada’s military mission to Afghanistan.
On the eve of our departure from Ottawa, officials told us that security problems made it unlikely that we would get into Afghanistan. By the time we got to Dubai we were convinced that this part of our mission was doomed. We instructed committee staff that we wanted to return to Canada as soon as our investigations in Dubai were completed. They did their best to change our tickets at a reasonable cost.
In London we had examined lessons learned from the tube bombing incident and problems with home-grown terrorists. We met with MI5, Special Branch, Railway Police and the Cabinet Office.
In Rotterdam – one of the best-policed ports in the world – we took a look at what they are doing right that might be applied to Canadian ports, which are still riddled with security problems.
In Dubai, we queried officials on their ability to run safe and secure ports. Dubai interests tried to buy six port terminals in the United States last year and were initially turned down. They bought the Vancouver port terminal, and have talked about expanding into Halifax. There are things we need to know about these people and their approach to ports, and this visit gave us the kind of insights we were looking for.
Meanwhile, staff still hadn’t been able to get us replacement tickets home at a price that wasn’t higher than our hotel costs. So we hunkered down and spent 42 hours editing our latest report – Managing Turmoil, which was tabled in the Senate on October 5 and received widespread media attention for its tough recommendations.
These editing sessions are a grind. Anybody who isn’t willing to put in grueling hours at getting at the truth goes elsewhere.
A few weeks after we got home, a CTV reporter described our trip to Dubai as a junket, complete with a shot of an opulent hotel room apparently taken off the hotel’s website. Our rooms, reportedly, had cost $US 500 a night. Our meeting room had been the Presidential Suite.
In fact our rooms were ordinary rooms that cost $311 Canadian a night – not a lot in Dubai. The hotel, the Renaissance, is a moderately-priced hotel in Dubai. Staff had shopped around. We stayed in ordinary rooms. Our meeting room was attached to a “Presidential Suite.” But it was an ordinary, boring meeting room costing $500 a day, a price that included most ordinary food so we could work through lunch.
No matter. The current government – clearly eager to get the bothersome Senate out of its hair –was more than delighted in helping to discredit a Senate committee – especially one with a good reputation. Terry Stratton, government whip in the Senate, “blasted” us for trying to argue that our trip had been anything more than a junket.
Stratton initiated an inquiry into the trip – which we welcome!
But at least for the moment, for a lot of Canadians, we remain cartoon characters. If the inquiry shows that we worked diligently on behalf of taxpayers, do you honestly think the “gotcha” guys in the media and the political back rooms rise up and say: “Sorry we smeared your reputations?”
Don’t count on it. When it comes to the Senate, the public loves a cartoon image. Sadly enough, there will always be second-rate journalists and politicians around to accommodate them.
Are we ashamed of anything connected to Dubai? We are not. But some people sure as hell should be.
Senator Colin Kenny is Chair of the Senate National Security and Defence Committee. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca