Afghanistan Committee on May 12th, 2010

[William Graham]

I'm glad the honourable member brought that up, actually. There were certain moments when nobody was saying that at all.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I think we're clear here, that you were--

[William Graham]

You must like my evidence all of a sudden.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I've always admired you, sir, as an international lawyer. And I believe that you and all the other Canadian officials were doing the best they could in difficult circumstances. I believe the same is true today.

But we're sitting here and we're hearing differing views now from people who were there at the time. Some are saying quite clearly you absolutely should have known, and others are saying there was no clear evidence and what you did was the best in the circumstances.

I'm simply curious to know what you would do if you were in my shoes today, in trying to interpret what Canada should have done back in 2005 and what it should be doing now.

[William Graham]

I think I would do what the chairman, I believe, is doing--trying to get the best evidence you can. You're going to have to be the judges of what you believe, with your knowledge of the political system and how it works, and what you think would be the best in the interests of the country. I'm confident that the committee in its wisdom will come to that.

That's all I can suggest.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Dewar, please, for five minutes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to go back to wrap up the piece about General Hillier.

So you were informed by General Hillier when he'd signed the agreement, and it was done with General Wardak?

[William Graham]

Probably not the next day, but certainly I would have been informed, yes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Did you support him being delegated that responsibility?

[William Graham]

I had no problem with it.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'm saying that because in the book I'm reading--you mentioned the book--it says that you didn't support that, but your evidence today is saying that you did support delegating the authority to General Hillier.

I'll read it to you:

The general signed the agreement for Canada, even though Graham

--that's you--

had not delegated this responsibility to him. Hillier insisted that the Department of Foreign Affairs had seen and approved the agreement at every stage and explained why he took this unusual step of signing the agreement:

--saying what you had said-- “Wardak was a friend of mine. We got to know each other when I was Commander of ISAF and he was CDS in Kabul. Wardak asked if I could sign the agreement since he had such great respect for me.”

How do we square that?

[William Graham]

Look it seems to me there are two issues here. There's the underlying issue as to whether or not the fact that General Hillier signed the agreement somehow delegitimizes the agreement. If that's the point, that's a discussion. If it's just an attack on General Hillier for going and doing something, that's something completely different.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Not at all. No, I'm just talking about who should do what.

[William Graham]

If I'd had to choose between them--if I had been there and somebody had said, “What do you think?”--I would have said “Get the ambassador to sign it.” But that's....

That would have been my opinion.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'm just going by what I read here.

[William Graham]

But I wasn't there, and I didn't have General Wardak leaning over the table saying, “I'll sign it now if Hillier signs it, but I won't sign it if....”

You know, you have to be in the negotiating room to know what's going on. I wasn't there.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

And that's what the concern is. That's my concern, that--

[William Graham]

Well, it's not my concern, because I don't think it goes to the legitimacy of the agreement whatsoever. It's a memorandum of understanding that was entered into in proper and due form between...that has just as much effect by its signature in the way it was signed as if it had been signed by the ambassador.

So that's not a concern to me.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

But the content of it is important. What I'm seeing here is that DND was kind of the lead in this agreement, this memorandum. And you admit that it was during the debate...as already mentioned, it was Bill Blaikie who brought up the process to which the Dutch had agreed. When that was brought forward by you or your staff to officials in the military, the Canadian Forces, they said that they pushed back, to say, no, we don't need to put those aspects into our agreement. In other words, they said that we didn't have to follow the Dutch arrangement of monitoring.

[William Graham]

Right, but we did follow the principle about no death penalty. We did take that from that agreement.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Right, but you didn't know about that until it was brought up in the House, correct?

[William Graham]

No, that's correct; Mr. Blaikie gave me the agreement.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

So what kind of advice were you getting? Who was it from?

[William Graham]

I explained to the committee that I got the advice from Major General Pitzul, who was the--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Do you think that advice was sufficient advice, in light of what we know now?