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While the Conservatives are being unaccountably taciturn about cost-forecasting the year’s extension, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has addressed conspiracy theories about the operation’s occult costs to date. The high-outside estimate for the six months so far: $166 million. By way of comparison, the anticipated cost of police and security operations for this summer’s two-week Pan Am and Parapan Games in Toronto: $239 million.

The one big unanswered question wasn’t raised by anyone in the Opposition. It was instead put directly to the Opposition, by Defence Minister Jason Kenney, this way:

“In the last two days we have been visited in Ottawa by leaders of the Canadian Iraqi, Syrian, Chaldean, Yazidi, Kurdish, Shia, secular, Sunni Arab communities, all of whom have enthusiastically endorsed the motion before the House on the extension and expansion of the Canadian military operation against this genocidal terrorist organization. I emphasize the word genocidal.

“There used to be a time when the NDP, representing the Canadian left, supported efforts to combat genocide. Whatever happened to that NDP? Whatever happened to the NDP’s commitment to the international convention on the prevention of genocide? Whatever happened to its support for the concept of the responsibility to protect?”

While we’re at it, the NDP was once ardently committed to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, too. Whatever happened to that?