Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Mulroney. Once again it is nice to have you here to explain the situation in Afghanistan, which is, as you explained, quite complex.
I want to bring into this two aspects and go to what your expertise is about distribution lists in DFAIT.
One of the aspects of what we are talking about here is the transfer of detainees captured by Canadian soldiers, the responsibility of the Canadian soldiers in terms of these detainees going across, and your responsibility and the subsequent agreement with you and the department to monitor that they were not being tortured, and if they were, what action was being taken. That is the first one.
But what I am hearing now coming from the opposition side is all this bigger issue, that you were hearing coming from the field that there was general torture taking place in the prisons and everywhere else, which, as you rightly pointed out, didn't have the capacity.
If there was general torture, that was part of your responsibility to create the institutions, the human rights and everything else. But we must be very clear here in terms of what was the responsibility of the Canadian soldiers to the detainees. That is the question we should be discussing, and not, as the opposition is saying, folding it into the bigger umbrella of human rights abuses as a whole.
Many questions have arisen here, such as on the C4 messages that come in here, the massive distribution list. With you being in DFAIT, can you perhaps guide us? If a C4 message arrived in the department, what would be the process? Would it go to everyone, or how would it reach the top portion? How would the information in a C4 message be disseminated to address your task force?