Afghanistan Committee on May 12th, 2010

[William Graham]

Well, I don't know about written assurances, but I can tell you I had personal conversations with Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, who was the foreign minister, my counterpart, about the importance of the agreement and the importance for the Canadian public to know that we were living up to the rule of law, and that, in fact, the success of the mission was depending on the rule of law because that's what we were there to establish, and he totally agreed with that.

President Karzai, when we raised it with him as to why we wanted the agreement and that it was important for us to have an agreement before we began our operations in the spring, accepted those arguments.

So I can't say as to whether it was a written assurance, but I can assure you that the Afghan authorities that I spoke to were of agreement.

To be fair, General Wardak himself, when he was reticent about the agreement, was reticent because he was concerned about his capacity to be able to make sure it was going to be properly applied.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Since General Wardak was concerned about capacity, and you'd received assurances from the foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, and from President Karzai, could I assume, then, that they were prepared to allow for and support the activities of the Afghan human rights commission and the Red Cross to ensure that those elements of the agreement would be in fact adhered to?

[William Graham]

Yes.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay.

It was the European Court of Human Rights that said on a case-by-case basis diplomatic assurances are inadequate if the issue comes to torture. I just wanted to get your take on what was expected, both by us and by the Afghan authorities, in terms of any transfers, and how in fact they would be monitored either by the human rights commission, which we of course were supporting both financially and obviously otherwise, and by the Red Cross. During the very short time, obviously before the election in 2006, were there any reports back from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission or the Red Cross of any concerns they had at the time?

[William Graham]

No, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and some of our own NGOs that we spoke to, and I mentioned Amnesty International earlier, were certainly concerned about the conditions in the Afghan jails. It's not the same as torture, but they were concerned about the level of conditions. I think that was a legitimate concern. That's why one of the things we had to do was provide some corrections officers and CIDA money to help improve the quality of prisons. That was one of the things we were doing when we were rebuilding Afghanistan in the rule of law, we contributed money to the judiciary, to the police, and to the corrections system. This was all part of the package of what we were doing with our presence in Afghanistan. In that sense, this is a part of that.

I haven't seen the case you're referring to in the European Human Rights Commission, but we were not in the position of sitting there saying, “We know that they torture in the Afghan prisons, so we'll put in this agreement, but we're going to turn them over anyway.” We didn't know that there was torture in the Afghan prisons. We didn't have the experience of that.

When we signed the agreement, we had every legitimate right to rely upon the word of the sovereign government of Afghanistan that they would live up to their obligations to Canada that they subscribed to in the agreement. If we had believed they weren't going to live up to them, we wouldn't have signed it with them. But we believed they would.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you for that, Mr. Graham.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Graham.

We'll go back to Mr. Dechert and Mr. Hawn.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Graham, I accept at face value your statement that you believe that Canadian armed forces officials, Department of Foreign Affairs officials, your government officials were trying to do their best in the circumstances,and very difficult circumstances. I believe the same is true today.

It's not my view, but there are those on the other side of the House and out there in the world, groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others, who say we could have done better. Perhaps that decision to transfer prisoners to the Afghan authorities rather than the U.S. authorities at Bagram was a bad one, or perhaps Canada should have built its own prison system and taken care of the prisoners itself. But I accept that everybody was doing their best.

You entered into an agreement, which, by your own admission, was flawed. We know it wasn't as good as the U.K. and Dutch agreements, and perhaps other agreements that were entered into at the same agreement. By your own admission it was improved in 2007.

If there are allegations of abuse today, do you and your government, your party, share any responsibility for that?

[William Graham]

I can't speak for today, because I speak to you--very happily--as a private citizen.

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

Fair enough, but in your capacity as Minister of Defence and Minister of--

[William Graham]

I'm freed from the allegations of this House of partisanship and other things. I can behave like a citizen like anybody else.

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

As a Canadian involved in the decision-making process, how do you respond to that?

[William Graham]

I can say that, certainly, when I was minister.... If you could go back, I'd go back. I could do a lot of things differently than I did. But perfection is the enemy of the good, as it's said.

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

You did your best under the circumstances.

[William Graham]

We did our best in the circumstances in light of the knowledge we had of the day. That's the best you can do. It's very difficult to foresee everything, that's for sure.

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

We're hearing conflicting views. Some DFAIT officials say allegations of abuse were widely known, and they told all members of the government, including your government, about that. Others say they weren't. Others say they don't think that there has been any abuse or that there's any evidence of abuse. There seems to be a difference of opinion based on different views of policies that might have applied or should apply in this circumstance.

How do you see these differing interpretations? How do you put that in context for us? What should we take from that?

[William Graham]

My experience as a minister was that in two ministries that had very large, very competent people, there was always a diversity of views. Within that group of officials, one works out what is the appropriate approach. That's worked out at the level of those officials. As a minister, you get the result of that. You don't go downstairs to the bottom of the foreign affairs department and walk around the halls and knock on doors and say, “What do you think about this?” You have a deputy minister who comes to you and says, “This is the view of the department.”

When I was foreign minister and when I was Minister of National Defence, I had a deputy minister, and a chief of defence staff, and a legal adviser, all of whom said, “This is the right thing to do. This has been coordinated with the other departments. This is our advice to you.”

I believed that advice, and I think I was appropriate to do it.

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

You yourself, sir, are very well qualified as a minister, as a professor of international law, as an expert in international law, and having served in those capacities and in government for many years, you were well qualified to accept that advice and understand the advice.

[William Graham]

That's for others to decide.

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

But I assume you would agree with that.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I don't remember you saying that at the time.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

I don't think I said that. I wasn't here at the time.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

No, you weren't here, but I'm thinking of some of your colleagues.

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

I have great respect for Professor Graham.