Here's another issue no party leader is talking about in this election campaign: Should Canada's federal government aid and abet torture? Unfortunately, this isn't an academic question. I wish it were. But there have been too many disturbing reports that indicate this country is complicit in torturing people that one government or another thinks are terrorists. The controversy over the use of Canadian airports by CIA-leased planes is the most recent. Europe is in an uproar over reports that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is shipping terror suspects to torture centres in countries such as Poland. Now, it seems that some of these planes stopped off to refuel in Canada before heading across the Atlantic.On Thursday, for instance, Norway's aviation authority confirmed that a CIA-linked jet flew last July 20 from Gander to Oslo and on to Paris.

French authorities, meanwhile, told Agence France Presse that they think the CIA may have been using Paris as a way station for terror suspects being transported to secret prisons in eastern Europe.

Canadian Press has confirmed that in recent months at least six aircraft linked to CIA front companies touched down at airports such as Gander and St. John's.

Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan says she's looking into reports that 55 CIA-linked planes landed in Canada over the past few years. But her spokesperson also said this week that McLellan won't ask the U.S. about this.

If the Liberal government were truly interested in preventing foreign countries from transporting prisoners to secret jails by way of Canada, there is a simple remedy. Ottawa could order airport authorities to thoroughly check every private long-range jet that stops over for refuelling.

If for instance, police at Gander inspected a Gulfstream III bound for Europe and found one of the passengers sedated, diapered, blindfolded and shackled to his seat, they might conclude that something was up.

The second area where Canada is vulnerable to charges of aiding torture has to do with Afghanistan. When Canadian troops take prisoners there, they hand them over to their U.S. allies.

The problem here is that the U.S. refuses to abide by the Geneva Conventions.

Indeed, the U.S. openly flouts international law, keeping some of its prisoners in secret jails with no access to the Red Cross. And it transports others to its Guantánamo prison camp in Cuba, where they may be held for years without charge and where, according to human rights groups and even some U.S. government reports, abuses are rife.

The problem for Canada here is that any soldier who hands over a prisoner to a country that refuses to abide by the Geneva Conventions is himself liable to be charged for war crimes.

So far, this hasn't been an issue. But the worm is turning and it may not be long before nations rediscover the virtue of international law.

When that happens, Canadian troops even indirectly involved in the eventual mistreatment of Afghan prisoners may well find themselves hauled up before the International Criminal Court.

In short, the Canadian government does our own troops no favours with its hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil approach. It insists it receives assurances that prisoners it hands over to the Americans won't be tortured. But under President George W. Bush, the U.S. defines "torture" in a chillingly narrow fashion â?” and everyone knows it.

Again, the solution is simple. When Canadians capture enemy fighters in Afghanistan, they could hand them off to a country willing to abide by the Geneva accords. Or Canada could operate its own prisoner-of-war camps. We've done it before.

Some might argue that such things don't matter, that in a domestic election campaign, politicians should talk only about tax cuts and child care.

Yet, in the wake of 9/11, some of the most fundamental values of what we sometimes call Western civilization are being called into question. Surely, that's worth talking about

Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal candidate for Toronto's Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding, has raised some of these issues. He wrote last year that "torture" should be banned but that the U.S. could, and perhaps should, legalize "acceptable degrees of coercive interrogation" such as sleep deprivation, disorientation and other techniques that "do not result in lasting harm to mental or physical health."

Is that Prime Minister Paul Martin's position too? What do Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and New Democratic Party chief Jack Layton think? The only other would-be politician willing to talk about this who I've run across is the NDP's Toronto Centre candidate, Michael Shapcott. He thinks there should be a national debate on Canada's involvement in U.S. coercive investigation techniques. My guess is that a fair number of voters would agree.

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