Foreign Affairs Committee on April 25th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Barbot.

Minister O'Connor.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Madame, I can assure you that, if through the military system, there was any specific report of abuse, torture, or abuse of human rights, we would act on it. But I'm going to ask the chief to confirm that. Certainly at my level, I've not received any substantive, precise reports. You may get a document or a report that says that overall there are some problems, but I'm talking about specific problems.

Chief.

[Gen R.J. Hillier]

In fact, I have not received any reports myself, Minister, or we would have acted on them.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Do you have to be given the name of the person, and be told when it happened and how many times? In a war situation, what do you mean by a specific complaint?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I think what she's asking for is a little more clarity on if there was a concern, or if someone brought forward....

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

I don't need a translator. I think we have an interpreter here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Yes, we'll give you extra time.

But just the process that they would go through, the process....

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Okay. I'll turn that over to the chief, but if we were aware of any specific allegations of abuse of this sort of horrific nature that is being described here, we would act immediately. We cannot work on general assertions that it's out there. We have to know specific cases. And if our troops were aware of specific cases, they would act, and they're under instructions to act.

[Gen R.J. Hillier]

In fact, Minister, I would second that by saying our troops have already acted. I think you saw a TV clip about a year ago, maybe a little less, when one of our non-commissioned officers in the middle of a combat operation with Afghans had some concerns that the safety of a detainee was at question, and he acted. He prevented that detainee from being put in the hands of some very emotionally charged Afghan soldiers who had just had their buddies shot--and indeed some killed--and he prevented certainly any chance of anything occurring. So they have acted.

If something was brought to the attention of any soldiers in Afghanistan, we would immediately run that through the chain of command. We would immediately contact the appropriate Afghanistan authorities, locally where it would be occurring, and immediately start action with them to ensure that it was stopped, and then progress through the rest of the government agencies, using, obviously, the Government of Canada as our vehicle there to make sure that corrective actions were taken permanently.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Madame Barbot, I'm going to give you some more time.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

We also saw prisoners on television who said that they had been tortured. You are telling us that you have not seen it and that you have not received any complaints about it. What are we to believe? How do we interpret the information we are getting?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Madam, where there is a specific case...for instance, the media reports of the last few days...we are actually checking these out. We have officials connecting with government officials and human rights officials and prison officials in Afghanistan to find out the veracity of these assertions. So we are acting on it.

But we actually have to know of a specific case. If somebody alleges that one of the detainees we handed over was tortured, we will absolutely investigate it and we will take action. But we cannot react on some report that says that in Afghanistan some people get tortured.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Minister.

Madame Barbot, I'll give you 30 seconds.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

You don't ever feel responsible for going and checking yourself what happens to the prisoners whom you hand over to Afghan forces? When you hand over prisoners, you think that everything is over, that you are not responsible anymore.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

We have the responsibilities and that's why we've entered into two agreements. We've entered into agreement with the Afghan government and with the human rights commission, and that's why I said earlier that we have, in the last few days, entered into a local agreement in Kandahar province to enter the detention facilities any time we want to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Minister O'Connor, for giving us your time today. You've gone five minutes over, and I apologize for that.

To all of you--General Hillier, Brigadier-General Watkin, and Mr. Elcock--we thank you all for being here at our committee. Certainly we will be going over your testimony, and it will be part of the report that we will have a little later on.

Committee members, we do not have committee business on the agenda, and Mr. Patry is not here. Can we adjourn?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

The meeting is adjourned.