Other than in some tangential ways I don't see that there's a whole lot of jurisdiction of the public safety minister here. He might have a few Mounties and some correctional officials over there giving advice, but I don't think anyone would seriously argue that it is part of the mandate of Mr. Day to manage the NATO intervention in Afghanistan and all that goes with it in terms of foreign affairs and diplomacy, etc. Likewise, it is clearly not the mandate of this committee. It never was. What goes on in Afghanistan stays in Afghanistan.
What has happened is that this minister, who does report to this committee in the parliamentary sense, has spoken in the House and has almost pretended that there's some connection between a CSE official and this prisoner business. I wonder what would happen over at the health committee—because there probably are health officials from Canada assisting in Afghanistan—if the Minister of Health said in the House that we have health officials advising on water supply for the prisons over there. Would the health committee call the health minister and start a whole inquiry about the prisoner thing based on water supply? I think not.
By the same token, the minister should want to be accountable for what he says in the House, and this is the committee that would normally call him. I will confirm that there is a tangential jurisdiction in relation to this public safety minister and the Mounties and the CSE officials who may be over there, but none of that has anything much to do with the core issue of the handling of detainees in Afghanistan.
If this committee were to embark on an inquiry, this committee would have real trouble enforcing its powers to send for papers and records in relation to officials and ministers who have nothing to do with the mandate of this committee. We'd be way outside our jurisdiction. We could only do a partial glimpse of this thing, not a full one, in my view.
Mr. Cullen's suggestion may be viable. We can take a look at the CSE window on this, but it wouldn't get near the core of it, and in my view, it's way outside the mandate. I think we should be very cautious about pretending to move into this window.