Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, thank you for making it possible to hear from both of us today, despite your considerable differences.
I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today and testify, which I will unfortunately be doing in English.
The reason I have come to address you on this point will be, I think, fairly obvious from my background. I am a professor and Canada research chair at the University of Ottawa, jointly appointed to the schools of law and medicine. I work in the areas of human rights law, global development, and population health, across that spectrum of issues. I'm trained both as a lawyer in Canada and as a scientist, which was my Ph.D. subject at Oxford University. Prior to coming to the University of Ottawa to take up a faculty position in Canada, my previous two faculty positions were at Harvard and Yale.
The reason I chose to come back to Canada was that, on an ethical plane, I felt very strongly about the preservation of human rights and how this country, which is so exemplary in its rule of law, actually can contribute a great deal to the world in the maintenance of human rights standards. That is very much why I came back to this country and tried to reverse the brain drain.
At the outset of these comments, I'd like to make an observation on the business that has been done in this committee today. There have been a lot of objections—I won't go into any specific ones—about the injustice of parliamentary procedure and the injustice of this motion or that amendment. I'd like us all to remember that the actual injustice is torture, extrajudicial killing, and disappearance in Afghanistan. Those are the human rights issues, and believe me, torture is a greater injustice than any breach of parliamentary procedure, and so is being murdered.
The reason we're here today is because of a report—and I have here the redacted version that was given to me under ATI—about human rights in Afghanistan. It is terribly important—and I say this to all parties—that no time be wasted on wrangling of a filibuster or other nature, and that what this committee must concern itself with is why information in the possession of the Canadian government about torture, extrajudicial execution, and disappearance was concealed. It is obviously the case that only by having that information in the possession of the Canadian government out in the sphere of public debate can the situation be improved. I don't want to put too sharp a point on it, but the longer the document is not public, the less that is known about it, and the less debate that can therefore take place on these issues, the longer the people's lives are in danger. They could be killed or they could be tortured, so it is terribly important for this committee to move ahead.
Having just scolded you in those friendly terms, let me tell you what happened with my access to information request. I'll present this information chronologically. If there are any questions about the chronology, Mr. Chairman, please feel free to interrupt me.
The documents from which I'm taking this chronology have been faxed to the clerk. If I refer to something that is not in his possession, however, I would ask the clerk to note it to me so that I can provide it if I have erred and have not provided it already.
On January 24, 2007, I filed an access to information request with the Department of Foreign Affairs.