Thank you, Mr. Obhrai.
First, our primary focus was to ensure that Canadian-transferred detainees did not face a substantial risk of torture. Every Canadian soldier is trained and is instructed in the responsibilities under the Geneva Convention. We work very closely with all parts of the Canadian Forces that were involved in capturing and transferring detainees.
DFAIT was responsible for providing the other piece of the process—that is, once the detainee is transferred, organizing with the Correctional Service and the RCMP the monitoring, the diplomatic engagement with the Afghan government if we have any concerns that those needs are not being met, and all the capacity-building and training. So it was a partnership and a continuum.
It wasn't unrelated to that larger issue of human rights, because a lot of our funding through CIDA and other mechanisms was going to improve the justice sector—to train judges, to train lawyers, to improve prisons, etc. So all those things were happening.
In terms of the distribution of C4 messages, generally the more important the message the higher it goes up in the system and the fewer people it goes to, because they are often more sensitive topics that are going to directors general, assistant deputy ministers, deputy ministers, or above.
Generally the message goes to either a person or an office. If it goes to an office, it is then the responsibility of the head of that office or the person who manages the C4 account to determine where it goes and how high up it goes. In other cases, a message might go to someone at one level and be passed on because of the importance that person attaches to it.
What we tried to do on our messages with the detainee issue was that we found, in the early stages of our work, some would go to seven people, and sometimes the message would go to 75 people. The more people the message goes to the more diffused is the accountability, so we said every organization has to identify one person who is primarily responsible for the detainee file in the organization. They are then responsible for ensuring that it goes to whoever else needs to see it.
I was always on that traffic and I made sure that I reported faithfully on anything I saw coming from the reporting. So we had to bring discipline and accountability to the distribution line.