Afghanistan Committee on May 12th, 2010

[William Graham]

You're asking me if General Pitzul could have given me the advice based on what we know now. He couldn't give me advice based on what we know now. He gave me advice based on what he knew then, which was the way in which we operated at that time as well. Nobody can foresee into the future. You can't ask General Pitzul to give me advice on the basis of what you know today.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

But a member of the opposition was able to figure out what the Dutch were doing. I don't think it's asking too much for our officials to have given you advice.

I'm not going after you, Mr. Graham.

[William Graham]

No, no, I appreciate that.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'm asking you who's doing what. And from where I come from, it should be our folks looking at what's going on in theatre, what are best practices, and advising you as minister.

I'm glad they said we should take out the death penalty. Frankly, it's a no-brainer. But they should have looked at what the others were doing and advised you. But it wasn't in this agreement. In fact, they pushed back.

[William Graham]

Well, they pushed back on the monitoring issue because they didn't believe it was appropriate in the circumstances. And that was the agreement--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Because they thought--

[William Graham]

--and that's what we didn't do. As you know, the subsequent government went into a monitoring agreement.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

They said it was because the Afghans would push back; that was why they didn't put it in.

[William Graham]

Well, if you've done negotiating in contracts--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I've done it.

[William Graham]

Then as you know, if you can't get the other guy to agree to it, that's a reason why it might not be in the contract.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

But when the other guy's got it in their agreement, I always get it in mine.

[William Graham]

Well, that's a fair point. That's a fair point.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dewar.

I do have a question, Mr. Graham. Are you able to go a little bit past 5 o'clock?

[William Graham]

I'm totally in the hands of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

[William Graham]

There's a more interesting hearing going on across the hall, you know. I don't think anybody in this room would rather be here than over there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I wouldn't think that. I think most of us would rather be here listening to you.

Mr. Graham, I do have a copy of the book that you referenced earlier on, The Unexpected War. In that book you actually get a fairly glowing...with some nice testimonials about your abilities and what you wanted to accomplish at that time.

I was here in the House at the time. In fact, I got into a bit of a problem in one question period when I asked the former defence minister about transferring prisoners to the Americans. There was some hesitancy. As a new member of Parliament at the time, I found out from the Speaker that I could say that he misled Parliament, but I couldn't say he intentionally misled Parliament. But that was the crux of the debate that day, whether or not they were transferring.

I'm just going to quote a couple of sentences from this book, somewhat out of context. I'm going to take different sentences from a couple of paragraphs. It says:

Although Bill Graham had supported the Kandahar mission he was deeply concerned about one issue.

Then it goes on and talks about the operatives, and about the issue of transferring Afghan prisoners.

It also says that Mr. Graham was an international lawyer with a strong interest in international humanitarian law. He had serious concerns about the transfer. Then it says:

Nevertheless, for Bill Graham this issue was vital, and he would push his officials hard to get a resolution that satisfied his standards.

It was highly politicized at that period of time in terms of the Americans. We had one member of Parliament stamping on a doll of the President of the United States. We had others standing in the House slamming the Americans. It wasn't immediately after 2001, but it was three or four years after.

You were coming into an election. Was there any consideration to the thought that we just could not cannot transfer to the Americans for political reasons?

This book lays it out--your concerns about what was happening at Guantanamo, and what was happening in Cuba. But was it politics, or was it indeed the potential for concerns of their rights at Guantanamo, compared to an agreement, with conditions, that you absolutely felt would have the detainees in a safer position in Afghanistan?

[William Graham]

Well, if I said there were no political considerations in this, I don't think you'd believe me, Mr. Chairman, and I don't think you should. I mean, of course politics are part of what motivates us who are in politics. That's a given.

But I think the balance of what we were trying to achieve here, as I said in my opening, was a recognition that we were acting in Afghanistan. The taking of prisoners by the United States had been going on for a long time. It was largely very much their war, if I can call it that.

The meetings and discussions we had at NATO, and with Mr. Karzai himself, were very much about legitimizing the international force in Afghanistan and taking it away from an exclusive American operation to become a true international United Nations authorized operation. That was the whole thrust of why we agreed to go with the Dutch and the British down to the south. That was the whole of what we were trying to achieve. That was, if you like, the geopolitical thrust of what we were doing. It was long discussed in NATO and everything else.

This prisoner issue was one very important subset in that. When I say we looked at it and said it was preferable to turn the prisoners over to the Afghans with appropriate safeguards than to the United States, then that prisoner issue was an overall consideration of the geopolitical issues at stake and the nature of legitimacy in the country of Afghanistan and legitimacy in the eyes of the Canadian public as well.

Every one of those factors played a role and every one of them factored into our decision. And I think we made...frankly, the same decision would be made today if everybody in this room was sitting there faced with exactly those same circumstances. That's all I can say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You would also agree--not to put words in your mouth--that the additional transfer agreement later on that included monitoring of prisoners was a good addition?

[William Graham]

It certainly created an additional pressure, if you like, on the Government of Afghanistan and gave Canadians more of an authority to do it. I don't disagree it was an improvement on the agreement. I said the agreement was not perfect, and I accept the fact that it was capable of improvement. There may be other improvements in the light of today. Maybe we should be making other improvements in the agreement. Life is a growing evolution, so maybe we should be making some other improvements, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy to concede that lots of improvements could be made to the agreement.

So I accept your statement. But I would also say, sir, and I am sincere about this, that a lot depends on how it's applied. The day after you signed your new monitoring agreement, all these problems didn't go away, if I can believe what's being read in the press. The British had a monitoring thing that was enforced long before ours, and if you read what's going on in the British House of Commons today, the same debate's taking place there that's taking place here, with or without the monitoring.

So it's not the monitoring in and of itself, it's how it's applied in the circumstances that also has to be taken into account. This would be my respectful submission.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Monsieur Bachand.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Earlier, Mr. Graham, you said you did not transfer any detainees before 2005. But I remember seeing a photo in the Globe and Mail where JTF2 soldiers seemed to be transferring detainees to the Americans. That is my first point. Correct me if I am wrong.

As for my second point, when the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association and Amnesty International took the federal government to court, they revealed that between 2002 and 2006, the Canadian Forces had taken more than 40 people prisoner, which seems to contradict what you are telling us, unless those 40 detainees remained under the control of the Canadian Forces.

Were there transfers before the agreement? Were any detainees transferred to the Americans? What did you do with the detainees you did not transfer? Did you keep them under Canadian government authority in the Kabul prison?

[William Graham]

First of all, when I said there were no detainee transfers, I did not say “never”. Everyone knows about the matter involving Mr. Eggleton and the JTF2 transfer in 2002. It was a cause célèbre. Everyone knows about it. So I am not denying that.

I believe there were some other occasional transfers in the interim, but I do not have any first-hand knowledge of specific cases. When we were in Kabul, for example—ISAF—I believe some prisoners were captured. I was not the Minister of Defence at the time, but I imagine they were transferred to the American authorities. That was the practice at the time, before our agreement was signed.

As for the events in 2006, I ceased to be the minister on January 15, 2006, so if the 40 detainees were captured between January 1 and January 15, I am guilty, but I doubt very much that that is what happened. It was after operations began in Kandahar in May. That is what I assume; I do not have any personal knowledge about this.