Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, I first would like to thank all three witnesses very much for coming today. Also, the three of them span the period of time from 2005 onward to 2009; that period was a very crucial one for Canada, because that is when we started moving into the country, started building the capacity, started having detainees.
As you have stated quite clearly, there was a process evolving throughout this time, and all three of you were involved in this process. One was the identification of the deficiencies of the first agreement that were coming up and that you noticed, which, as Ambassador Sproule pointed out, was during his campaign; then it went to Arif Lalani's, when the new agreement came into place, and then to Mr. Hoffmann, with the operation of this new agreement came through.
But very clearly and importantly, all three of your jobs underline one very serious thing that everybody must understand, which was how to meet our international obligations, as you rightly pointed out, under the Geneva Convention and this.
Because today we are talking about detainees, I will go to the question of the detainees. Very quickly, I will go to Ambassador Sproule.
Ambassador Sproule, during your time or during Arif Lalani's time, Mr. Richard Colvin wrote a lot of reports during his time, as Mr. Arif Lalani has said, but at no given time did he ever say--or do you know that he said it, or perhaps you could tell the committee whether he said--that we should stop the transfer of detainees.