[Redacted]
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
- Edwin Starr (after ATIP review, presumably)
It doesn’t quite have the same ring, does it?
I remember not believing my eyes the first time I saw this release. It was a little over a decade ago that I noticed the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade had sanitized or redacted the word “War.”
The sanitization, while absurd, is a fossil. It memorializes the contortions some Canadians adopted in speaking and thinking about the military operations Canada undertook after 9/11.
This sanitization - and several like it - were made by DFAIT in response to a 2011 request for records related to Canada’s response to 9/11.
The redacted document was a November 2001 draft of speaking remarks prepared for the Deputy Minister (USS), ahead of a speech in Beijing. The speech was titled “The World After 11 September: A Canadians View.”
About a year ago, I filed a new request for the remarks, including draft versions. I hoped that, finally, the word “War” could be revealed to the world, without injury to Canada’s national security.
What came back was even more intriguing than I expected.
Reader, a quick note: Given the images below, this post might be better read on a screen larger than that of a phone.
Would you like to accept all track changes in this document?
GAC recently released a copy of the draft that included suggested edits offered by a member of the department in 2001. This includes repeated suggestions to remove the word “War.”
It seems clear now that when departmental reviewers sanitized the 2011 release, they simply redacted anything the 2001 editor suggested should be removed. In that first release, DFAIT did not release the suggested edits themselves.
We now have the draft speech in full, including the word “War.”
We also have a better sense of why some in the department urged the Deputy Minister not to use the word “war.”
Below are several instances in which I’ve sought to triangulate the sanitized speech, the unsanitized speech, and the editing suggestions that led to the initial sanitization.
In each of these sections, you will see the 2011 release on the right, and the most current release on the left. Below are the suggested edits. [Clarification: These documents are now fully open, including the editorial notes that I believe explain the earlier redactions.]
‘We should avoid using the term “war”’
Bonus points for sanitizing the word “astonishing.”
‘We should not reinforce the notion this is a war.’
It was a “military campaign” in which there would be “casualties / collateral damage suffered.” But not a war.
When is a fight acceptable?
Now the word “fight” is not acceptable — although it was recommended as a replacement for “war,” above.
Whose destruction is it anyway?
Here, the draft says Al Qaida, etc., “continue to plot our destruction” and the word “our” was called into question in 2001, then sanitized in 2011.
‘We no longer talk about “tolerance”’
More bonus points
It is curious to me that the first use of “globalization” had to be withheld but its second use was fine.
There were two stamps explaining the sanitization of the word “globalization.” One was s.15(1), which means the information “could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the conduct of international affairs.” The second was s.21(1)(a), “advice or recommendations developed by or for a government institution or a minister of the Crown.”
Give me a break.
Operation CENTURION
Another recent release indicates that the initial JTF-2 operation in Afghanistan was called CENTURION. To the best of my knowledge this has not been previously released. We can see from this document that the personnel would require an operational pause for one year after returning home. I assume pauses like this contributed to the need to expand JTF2 identified here. https://timsayle.substack.com/p/the-doubling-of-jtf-2
Some details about Op CENTURION were also released: It seems that the special operators might have been running out of “relevant operational tasks” and it was possible they would return to Canada earlier than expected.
You have been served!
They don’t actually say that in Canada, it turns out.
Canada Declassified was in the news again, recently — if not identified directly. Caroline Maynard, the Information Commissioner of Canada, recently told a parliamentary committee that her office filed Federal Court applications after the Department of National Defence disregarded her order to respond to requests. One of those requests was mine. I am looking forward to resolution here.
My Department is also doing a social media series, “What do History Profs do on Wednesday mornings?” The videographer just happened to find me reviewing the court applications.
(The editing confuses the issue slightly: The OIC has filed a court application seeking redress on the DND issue, while, in a second instance, the LAC has filed an application because it will not meet the Commissioner’s order on another set of records from the 1950s and 1960s.)