Here's the difficulty that I have, and I think a lot of Canadian citizens do too, including even those who have maybe just marginally followed this file over the four or five years since Mr. Arar was deported.
Periodically two things happen. We heard veiled comments from Americans—Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Cellucci, I'm quite sure, and I think from Mr. Ridge. They would never, of course, be forthright enough to say “This is what we got from the Canadians”, but there were veiled comments. “You knew”—“you” meaning Canada, because I don't mean you personally—“and your agencies knew why we used rendition against him to send him to Syria.” That was in the media repeatedly. I can recall particularly when Mr. Cellucci said that, because I've had a discussion with him about it. I'm quite sure Mr. Ashcroft did as well. So we had that.
And then we had the media leaks in which terms like “Islamic extremist” and “terrorist” were floated, describing Mr. Arar. Some of those were before you became minister and some were after, but as the minister during that period of time, did you not question whether that description of Mr. Arar, those allegations, and those accusations levelled at Mr. Arar, were coming from our intelligence services? Did you ever ask the RCMP or any of our intelligence services whether they were coming from us? And I have to say, Ms. McLellan, if you didn't, why didn't you?