Afghanistan Committee on Oct. 21st, 2009

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

--if he accepts the amendment and the subamendment, then we can. That's all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Okay.

Mr. Hawn, do you have something to say?

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Yes. Peter Tinsley himself said in his long judgment about suspending the MPCC that one of the things he was trying to avoid was having people called over and over again to different committees.

The committee can do what it wants. I understand it's a parliamentary committee and that's all fine, but it does go against what Tinsley himself was trying to accomplish.

The other aspect of this is that Claude's motion is just fine as it is; it's all-inclusive.

As you rightly point out, the job of the subcommittee is then to determine specific witnesses, and if they want those three guys, obviously they'll get them. That's just fine, but let's keep it simple. Let's follow the customary process. We're going to have to continue here, and if we're going to do this, then we're going to be doing subamendments as well with some of the people my colleague mentioned. Obviously we have the Judge Advocate General's people who need to come in, and we have justice department lawyers who need to come in.

Why don't we just stick with the simple process? We have a simple motion. Let's pass the simple motion and let the subcommittee and then the committee get on with whoever they want to bring in. It can be those three guys; it can be a hundred people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Abbott.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I want to be careful that I am not challenging the chair. My comments are not intended that way at all. It's just that while I have the greatest respect for Mr. Wilfert and his experience in these things, I'm not at all clear in my own mind that notwithstanding whatever the FCM rules might be, we have parliamentary rules and I would like to be sure that we are following them in this particular instance, accepting this assertion by Mr. Dewar.

If I may continue just before you comment on that, Mr. Speaker, I must tell you that I find this quite frustrating, as I'm sure all of us on both sides do, in that we have a motion by Mr. Bachand that accomplishes everything that all of us want to accomplish. We are all in agreement, I believe, that Mr. Bachand's motion should go forward. And then we have this business of bringing in a new element to Mr. Bachand's motion, which then ends up restricting the power of Mr. Bachand's motion unnecessarily, because the same people that Mr. Dewar is proposing, that Mr. Wilfert is proposing, that I am proposing, are names that could be handled by the steering committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Holland.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Very quickly, Mr. Chair, I have been in committee where friendly amendments have been accepted. It's part of Robert's rules. I think that's well established. But that being said, I've also been in committees where a chair didn't accept it. My recommendation here is that you either accept it or don't accept it. If you do accept it, we move on with that. If not, then we move directly to voting on the subamendment and then the amendment. It effectively will do the same thing.

I just take some exception to the notion that prescribing witnesses somehow is a restrictive move. It absolutely is not. If you are prescribing the witnesses you wish to appear before a committee, the committee always, at its every opportunity, as master of its own destiny, can add additional witnesses as it sees fit. The only thing it does, in my opinion, is accelerate the agenda of the committee to say these are the witnesses that need to be heard from. If the committee then decides later on that it wants to hear additional witnesses, they can always do that.

But I would recommend respectfully, Chair, that you make a determination on whether or not you will or will not accept a friendly amendment. We either go with that or we go with the subamendment and then the amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Holland, and then Mr. Wilfert. Then we're going to bring this to a head.

You're on the list, Mr. Bachand.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Chair, we do need to get to a resolution on this. I'm just going to go back. The simplest thing is Mr. Bachand's motion. It is all encompassing. The fact is we are going to have to go back and look at who we want to come, and we may not have that at our fingertips. But sections 37 and 39 were brought in by the previous government, so we clearly need to hear from the justice minister at the time or some officials, or the public safety minister at the time, who was Anne McLellan. I'm always happy to see Anne again.

We're making this much more complicated than it needs to be. Clearly those three people are going to come to the committee at some point anyway. So let's follow the customary process, have a simple motion, which we support. Sections 37 and 38 are the basis of what most of this discussion is really coming back to.

There are aspects of this whole process that cause one to ponder about the motivation behind it. That's all I'll say in that regard. But let's not make things complicated--sorry?

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

One at a time here.

Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Let's not make things complicated. We support Mr. Bachand's motion as is. We can approve that. We can pass that. We can call whatever witnesses the committee wants. But let's keep it simple.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Wilfert, and then Mr. Bachand is going to get the last chance.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I know that Laurie wasn't impugning any motives here, but you can simply say that the committee hear from witnesses, including but not limited to...and then the names that Mr. Dewar and I put forth.

But I just want to point out for the record, Mr. Chairman, that this committee as a whole has taken on the responsibility sometimes from the subcommittee, for example, when we dealt with the issue of Afghan travel and witnesses that were put forth by the analyst. We actually have dealt with them as a committee of the whole. So we're not suggesting anything groundbreaking here; it's been done before.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Bachand, you get the last word, and then I will make a determination.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

So the onus is on me.

If possible, I would like the committee to agree to an approach like that unanimously. That could not be allowed in Canadian society as we know it and we should not tolerate it elsewhere. If atrocities have been committed, if our soldiers, knowing that Afghan detainees are tortured, have handed them over to Afghan authorities anyway, we have to get to the bottom of it.

I think we are nitpicking here. I tried to convince Paul that my motion included his, in the sense of the witnesses, for a start. You said it: even the steering committee can decide which witnesses it wants to call. In order to accommodate Paul Dewar, I suggested putting the names of his three witnesses in my motion, but I do not want it to be just those three witnesses.

As Ms. Lalonde mentioned earlier, we could add the word “including“. That would need a subamendment. We already have Mr. Wilfert's subamendment on the table and I am asking him to withdraw it. If we could add the word “including“, it would mean that my motion is agreed to in its entirety. The first three witnesses that we will hear from are those already mentioned and, if we need to hear from others, we will call them. In a spirit of compromise, we must not take positions that are so firm as to upset half the committee.

To Mr. Hawn's comment that my motion has everything we need, I would say why not accommodate one of our colleagues at this table, maybe more, by adding these three witnesses? Then, if NDP and Liberal members want to call others, they can suggest it and we will decide, as we do on all committees.

I sort of hesitate to say that we should end the debate. At the moment, I see no consensus, so unfortunately, there will have to be winners and losers around the table. I would like us all to be winners by defending Afghan detainees and by making sure that Canadian behaviour in this matter is beyond reproach. It is your call, but, personally, I am not ready to say that we should wrap this up right away.

I suggest that we ask Mr. Wilfert to withdraw his subamendment and Ms. Lalonde to add the word “including“ in order to give us a bigger pool of witnesses. Hopefully, that will convince Mr. Hawn that my motion, even with an NDP amendment, changes nothing because we are going to hear from those three witnesses in any event. If that satisfies the NDP, why do we not all agree to doing that?

After all, it was Mr. Dewar's intention to let my motion be tabled first. I cannot believe that we cannot agree to that. My proposal alone, or the proposal as amended, it amounts to the same thing. We are looking for consensus. All we have to do is put it out there and have everyone rally round.

That is my appeal to you. The decision is up to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With respect, even if we did that, it would not be logical for those three people to be the first witnesses. We're dealing with sections 37 and 38. That's what all of this discussion comes back to, the application of that, what it means as to who can say what to whom. It's entirely illogical to call those three witnesses--or any others, frankly--until we have dealt with witnesses who can shed light on section 37 and section 38, why it was put in that way, what it means, what their thought process was at the time, what it means now, what it means going forward. That means the people who were there when it was drafted, and the people who are in charge of administering the Canada Evidence Act and so on now, whether it was the Judge Advocate General, the Department of Justice, whoever, and how the Canadian Forces have interpreted that.

Mr. Chair, I'm not saying it's not an important issue. How we carry out our international obligations is obviously very important, but let's not forget that the treatment of Afghans by other Afghans is the real issue, and what people may or may not have seen or may or may not have heard. There have been all kinds of allegations. Not a single one has been proven.

I can tell you that in my view, and certainly from my own experience in my own riding, the only people seized with this issue are in Ottawa. No one, not one single constituent, has voiced a concern to me by e-mail, phone call, town hall meeting, whatever, not one single time, suggesting that they were concerned about this issue and the aspects that are being discussed here.

That doesn't mean it's not worthy of discussion and worthy of an investigation, because it does have to be clear to everybody, to Canadians, to people in this House and people on the street. If there's anybody out there who really does view this with some sense of alarm or concern, if they're out there, not a single one has talked to me. I've had a few who have said things in the opposite direction that were perhaps unkind, from a human rights point of view, but certainly nobody has brought this to me, other than people in this House.

It's illogical to single out those three people. If we go down that road, then we'll be proposing some subamendments, sub-subamendments, whatever we're going to do, and under the rules those will need to be dealt with from the bottom up, and we can be here for as long as we need to be here. But Tinsley himself, Mr. Chair, has commented on this kind of a process, saying that it's not appropriate, it's an abuse of witnesses to keep calling them to different venues. He has voluntarily suspended his commission until the issue is resolved by his appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal. He said himself that, in effect, this is not the way to go.

I don't know how many people read his judgment on whether to suspend his commission or not. It was quite long, it was quite detailed, and it went into all kinds of detail about section 37 and section 38—not so much section 37, mostly section 38—the implications of that and so on. But until we hear from the people who drafted it and the people who are in charge of administering it today, it makes no sense to call these other folks.

Mr. Wilfert did bring up, quite correctly, that whatever the committee decides to do, in terms of witnesses, can be done at committee of the whole, this committee, or it can be done in subcommittee. It doesn't matter. But we're complicating a motion that doesn't need to be complicated. We've had discussions on it. It seemed like a pretty straightforward motion--Mr. Bachand's motion. It is all-encompassing. It does leave us complete leeway to make it one meeting, two meetings, ten meetings, whatever. It doesn't matter. We can go on ad nauseam, as we are wont to do at times, and there's simply no need to do that.

Mr. Chair, I think my colleague may have some comment as well.

We have made a very simple process overly complicated. I think we should vote on Mr. Bachand's motion as is. We are prepared to pass that as is. Then the committee can move on with three witnesses or one hundred witnesses, in one meeting or twenty meetings. That's the committee's choice.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you.

Mr. Dewar, and then Mr. Kerr. We're getting a list again.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair, I was hoping we could get to the amendment. It was the request of Mr. Bachand, and I think Madame Lalonde was going to speak to it.

To accommodate the concerns that were elicited by Mr. Bachand, after Mr. Bachand's motion we can say:

and including, but not limited to: Peter Tinsley, Chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission; Richard Colvin, diplomat; Capt. Steve Moore, Canadian Forces Provost Marshal; and General Rick Hillier to discuss recent events at the MPCC hearings.

It will accommodate the Bloc's concern about not limiting witnesses, and certainly we've heard that from the Liberals and others. After hearing from Mr. Hawn, it sounds clear to me that they don't want to discuss the MPCC hearings and they don't want these witnesses to come forward. As I said before, I think the amendment is trying to bring together the wishes of Mr. Bachand and certainly what I had in my motion.

My motion is very explicit, Mr. Chair. It was to have committee hearings on the recent events at the MPCC and that the key players are Mr. Tinsley, Mr. Colvin, Mr. Moore, and of course Mr. Hillier. To not have those witnesses in front of this committee and to not discuss recent events at the MPCC hearings is to basically waste the opportunity.

I opened my remarks by saying that the rationale for my motion—which I deferred to Mr. Bachand in the spirit of cooperation—goes back to the motion that was passed in the House on Afghanistan. It was to deal with transparency when it came to detainees.

I think it's a very simple amendment to have “and including, but not limited to”, and I named the people: Mr. Tinsley, chair of the MPCC; Mr. Colvin, the diplomat; Mr. Moore, the Canadian Forces provost marshal; and General Hillier, to discuss recent events at the MPCC hearings. It captures the spirit of Mr. Bachand.

It might not capture the wishes of the government. They still have the opportunity to discuss the issue around sections 37 and 38, which they were wanting to discuss. It is a compromise. I certainly did that when I deferred to Mr. Bachand. I think it also allows us to have more witnesses if we want to. We're not limited.

I'll leave it at that, Chair, to have that amendment, “and including, but not limited to”, and then name the names, “to discuss recent events at the MPCC hearings”. I'm moving that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Are you changing your original amendment?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Yes, I just tweaked it to accommodate the concerns of people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

We're not dealing with your original amendment. You've changed it.

We have quite a list, and we don't have a heck of a lot of time if we're going to get this dealt with.

Mr. Kerr.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thought was back on the amendment to the amendment to the amendment.

I don't often interject, but I've been through a lot of committee processes, as probably most of us have, and I take exception to the last thing that Mr. Dewar said. It seems that he is setting up a very specific agenda and timetable for the committee.

When I listened carefully to Mr. Bachand's motion, which I was fully prepared to support, it sounded as though we were going to bring in a number of witnesses and spend some time looking at all the issues. That went to the three witnesses we must bring in right now. It was three in the motion, and now it's gone to four who we must bring in at the very outset.

That's not the spirit I was getting from Mr. Bachand at all. What I was getting from him was to have a fulsome, open discussion, and if it includes these witnesses as part of the process, okay.

The steering committee should set the timetable and agenda. I get from Mr. Dewar that he immediately wants these ones because that's the real purpose. The only reason he's supporting the motion of Mr. Bachand is to get these particular four witnesses here. That's the difficulty I'm having.

If it's going to be an open discussion of those particular regulatory processes with a variety of witnesses, that's one thing. However, you're naming these, and you said these are the ones who must start first. In fact, you're predetermining the outcome of this particular--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

A point of order.

Sorry, Mr. Kerr. Just to be fair, I didn't say that these witnesses must be heard first. Just to be clear, I said “including, but not limited to”. So let's not torque it up too much.