I have to say to you, Mr. Elliott, that it wasn't unclear, it was just wrong. He told us he knew about it on this date. In fact he didn't know about it, based on his second round of testimony, until some three or four years later, when the O'Connor report finally came out. That's not a clarification, that's an outright mistake on his part.
But back to questions. I think the frustration I have with this process is that I don't see any change within our intelligence services in terms of responsibility for reporting up to the deputy ministerial level and, more importantly, to the ministerial level.
It's quite clear from the testimony we got from former ministers McLellan and Easter that in that period of time, and in particular near the end of the time of Mr. Arar's incarceration, they and Mr. Graham, the foreign affairs minister, were asking very direct questions, some even coming from the Prime Minister's Office, that, look, this man is being held--we're hearing more and more--improperly, illegally, but we're not getting information from within the RCMP that false information had been given to the Americans that might have precipitated his incarceration.
I don't hear, from the testimony we had from Mr. Day and Commissioner Zaccardelli, and now from you today, any change that would say to me that if we had mid-level or line staff who had the same situation as we had in that year when Mr. Arar was in custody, that they would still not hold that information back from the upper echelons of their respective agencies.
Can you give me some assurances that this would not happen again?