Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Basically, what we do is try to talk to people in Afghanistan who would have some intelligence, some information, about threats to both Canada and to our allies. By definition, those people are either terrorists themselves, Taliban insurgents, or they're people who know something about them. So our job is, in one shape, form, or another, to try to acquire that kind of intelligence.
One of the categories of people that we talk to, Mr. Chair, is suspected Taliban insurgents taken into custody by the Canadian Forces through some sort of operation that they have run. Initially, when we were first in Afghanistan, over the first few years the Canadian Forces were not organized to interview these people. So in the context of a quite structured Canadian Forces interviewing program, we were frequently brought in to ask them questions, usually to try to ascertain their identity, to try to find out what they had been up to. In most cases, these interviews lasted less than 15 or 20 minutes. They were then transferred, at the call of the Canadian Forces or not, to the Afghan authorities.
So, yes, our job involves talking to people in Afghanistan who potentially would do harm to Canadians and to try to use that information, to provide it to both Canadian authorities and the Afghan authorities, to forestall harming Canadian and allied lives.