Canada will think about the Serious Crimes Inquiry, which on Friday seemingly ruled itself unable to really find out what went wrong in the Rebecca Middleton trial.

Just when the Commission seemed to be getting to the bottom of the case, it decided that its terms of reference forbade it from delving too deeply into that case, or any other.

The fear seems to be that an individual will get blamed for the case, and based on what the Commission was able to find out before cutting itself off, there was plenty of blame to go around.

It is not clear that the Commissioners themselves can be held responsible for this sorry state of affairs; the terms of reference were deliberately drawn up to avoid reference to the Middleton case and to instead look into all serious crimes.

That's fine, but can the Commission do its job if it can only skim the surface of any case and then draw back if it looks like an individual is going to be criticised? To be sure, the role of the Commission should be to draw conclusions from past mistakes and to make proposals to avoid errors in the future.

But to do that, it must have the freedom to range freely over cases and to get to the bottom of them.

And concerns about reputation or blame or embarrassing people should have no place in the Booth Hall inquiry room; those being questioned are mainly public officials who must know that they can and should be held accountable for their actions.

TAX BREAKS EDT Tax breaks Government's decision to push through the Castle Harbour tax concessions on Friday has raised the hackles of the Opposition.

That should come as no surprise. It goes against Parliamentary convention to push through legislation when the Opposition, let alone the Country has had no opportunity to consider it and the United Bermuda Party was right to question the propriety of the move.

There are a great many questions about the concessions planned by the Government, and few of them have been answered at this point.

Given the scale of tax breaks being offered by Government to the developers, it will be only a matter of time before other hotels, both large and small, are looking for similar breaks.

Tourism Minister David Allen has pointed out that the Opposition was given a series of drafts of the order beforehand and many of the details of the package had been well aired from January on.

He also makes the point that Government must have the Hotel Concessions Act and the order enacted this month, or the deal will fall through.

There will be times when emergency legislation will be rushed through the House of Assembly to deal with a specific problem and MPs on both sides of the floor understand that.

But one wonders whether this order falls into that category.

Why weren't the bill and order drafted earlier if they were so important.

After all, the House has spent innumerable Fridays this year doing next to nothing.

Very often, when tax breaks are being offered, the devil is in the details, and two days (the UBP received the final draft of the order last Wednesday) is not much time to look at the details.

The fact that Government also debated the Order at the beginning of the day is also odd; the order would not have reached the Senate any more quickly if it was debated at 10 a.m. or 3.30 a.m.

Still, the Government got what it wanted. The order has swept through the House and will presumably sweep through the Senate, which cannot stop money bills.

But the Country will have to decide if it was worth it.