Mr. Chair, I have a short comment. Just to pick up on what Minister O'Connor has said, when this new arrangement came into place after a period of time, some in this committee publicly have said that nothing was going on. I think it has been called a black hole, which is completely untrue. Let me just describe for you what you've already heard from Colleen Swords, who was a senior member at the Department of Foreign Affairs, a public servant.
In early 2006, the Department of Foreign Affairs, as Minister O'Connor has just noted, became aware that the International Committee of the Red Cross had concerns with respect to notification of transfers. Action was taken based on that advice. By October, the Department of Foreign Affairs had commissioned a report from Correctional Service of Canada about capacity, so there were prison visits happening. Canadian officials from Correctional Service of Canada had deployed into the prisons to take a look at what had to happen.
So we were not standing still; we were taking action. By February 2007, the Government of Canada had a number of experts on the ground looking at how to increase the capabilities and capacity of Afghan officials. Mentoring was underway. Correctional Service of Canada offered the training and the mentoring of the police officials and prison officials.
In February 2007 also, an exchange of letters happened, a partnership between the Government of Canada and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. That was being negotiated and concluded in that year as well. It called for a notification when we transferred prisoners within the prison system.
By April of that year, following a Globe and Mail story, Canadian officials were involved in a number of the meetings with Afghan officials and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. All of this activity led to and culminated with the signing of the new transfer arrangement. There was much activity by many officials and much success in improving the transfer arrangement, which gave greater access to Canadian officials inside their prison system.