Over the last few weeks our committee has been very much on top of how to improve our security service to protect Canadians, particularly the innocent Canadians who were tarnished in this country.
One thing that has really bothered me from the very beginning of the Arar case is the behaviour of the American government and the inability of our government to not only protect or stand up for our citizens, but even get information from the American government on why they're doing it. I don't know whether this falls within your mandate, but I sure want to share that concern with you and members of the committee to see how we can protect Canadians abroad.
There is increasing knowledge about what the American government is doing with secret detention centres all around the world. It's not only innocent people in the United States who are being targeted; they're working on anyone. Anyone anywhere in the world could have been put away by them and subjected to torture and that kind of thing.
On the Arar case, I'm not trying to be partisan, but when Mr. Harper, our Prime Minister, said he wanted the Americans to come clean on this issue and the response we got from the Americans was a letter saying they won't do it again, that's not reassuring at all. When the former CSIS director was here, we asked whether they had asked the American security services what prompted them to deport Mr. Arar to Syria, and they didn't share any of that information. We asked and they didn't care. Right?
At the end of the day, how can we as the Canadian government protect our citizens? How do we go on from this point to find justice for Mr. Arar for maltreatment by the American government? I don't know if you can comment on that.