Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Olexiuk, I agree with your statement. As the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, I deal with bureaucrats all the time and I can vouch for what you just said in your statement today, that they do the best thing for Canada in a non-partisan way. So I want to thank you on behalf of Canada and my colleagues.
The question here, Ms. Olexiuk, is a very important one. Canada went into the Afghanistan theatre, and it's very important that during your time there you issued a lot of reports. You brought in a lot of issues of human rights in the early time the government was there. Of course, you are saying, and I agree with you, that it's not partisan with you. But at that given time, the government in action was across the aisle, and one of the most senior members of that government, in that cabinet, is sitting right across from me. One would be very interested in knowing, what did he know? Today he stood up in the House of Commons and talked about the ICC, he talked about the Criminal Code, and he talked about the government knowing this.
My main question to you, in regard to your reports on this thing, is what did you tell the senior members of the government, in your view? Did you have a discussion or anything else? This is a very serious charge he has made. He's made a charge, not recognizing that he will be facing the same charges for the things you have just said today about their ignoring your reports on human rights abuses.
So perhaps you can tell us how much discussion did you have with the foreign ministers at that given time—Mr. Pettigrew and Mr. Bill Graham? How far did those go, and we would like to know how much deeper this abuse you talked about went to the Liberal government and the member sitting opposite here. What did he know about it? We will find out later on. We would like you to tell us now, in your view, how much do you think the government of the day knew about human rights abuses.