Good morning, colleagues. Welcome to meeting number 49.
Today we're continuing our investigation of the internal report entitled “Afghanistan 2006: Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights”.
We have with us today, from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Lillian Thomsen, director general, executive services bureau; and Jocelyne Sabourin, director, access to information and privacy protection division.
Welcome, to our witnesses.
Before I get to the witnesses, I want to remind members that I received, and you should all have received, a copy of a letter from the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. I want to remind members of the contents of that letter, which I will précis.
Basically, he is advising me as the chair of this committee that the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development passed a motion at its meeting at which it requested a full and uncensored version of the document that we are considering. He obviously refused to provide that, and his reasons are that he believes he has to abide by his interpretation of the Access to Information Act.
The reason I bring this to your attention is that we can deal with this at another time, but obviously the witnesses who are before us will be following the advice given by their deputy minister in respect of whether or not they are able to provide us or talk to us about an uncensored version of the report.
I bring this to your attention because members may or may not be wanting to question that way, and they may get frustrated, but given the letter of the deputy minister, either we may have to deal with this through him, or it may be very pertinent questioning for our witnesses on Thursday, who are the Information Commissioner and our general counsel, Rob Walsh. We may want to ask advice from our general counsel, for example, on Thursday about the situation. There are plenty of other things that we can ask our witnesses today.
Mr. Martin, did you want to make a comment before we start?