Somalia Cover-up: A Commissioner's Journal

J.L. Granatstein, distinguished research professor emeritus of history
at York University, is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and
co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influential Canadians of the
20th Century and the Dictionary of Canadi

The Commission of Inquiry into the troubles that beset the Canadian
Airborne Regiment in Somalia mesmerized the nation. The country watched
officers apparently lying, passing the buck, and displaying an alarming
inability to remember anything but their names. There sat the
commissioners, one sputtering, one silent, and one, Peter Desbarats,
trying hard to understand what had happened.

This book—in effect, a diary of his time as a commissioner—tells us
what Desbarats knew and thought as the tale unfolded. And what is that?
Unfortunately, not a great deal. As this country has never had a book by
a commissioner offering his comments on the evidence upon which he
offered judgment, we might have expected some revelations. There are
none, although Desbarats would likely attribute this to the successful
cover-up launched and sustained by the Department of National Defence.
Instead we get maunderings on the difficulties of flying back and forth
between his home in London and Ottawa, comments on the loneliness of the
long-distance commissioner, and banal assessments of his colleagues, the
media, the government, and the military.

Many lawyers maintain that it was highly improper for a commissioner to
write a book at all; if Desbarats felt he had to break convention, it is
a pity the result is no better than it is. The Somalia inquiry was
important; it deserves a good history and might yet get it, but
Desbarats’s journal is destined to be little more than a footnote to
that history.