Mr. Speaker, in my view the only way that we will ever retain any confidence-not just us but the Canadian people and the military-in it is to exorcise all the ghosts and demons. No matter how long it takes and no matter how much it costs, it will be worth it.
Let me bring one more instance into this. Sergeant Mark Boland was asleep at the time that this took place. He was a section commander. He accepted responsibility for what happened because it happened on his watch. Even though he was not on site, these people were under his direct command and he accepted responsibility. He pleaded guilty to dereliction of responsibility because it happened. He did a plea bargain and got nine months.
He is a career military person. He recognized it was wrong. The military said: "Okay, plead guilty. We will give you nine months and you can get on with your life". He got his nine months and then the military appealed. Then he got over a year and they could then kick him out.
Mark Boland was an exemplary career soldier. If the commission wants to hear horror stories about what really went on in Somalia it should interview him. Mark Boland was given a direct order by a superior commissioned officer who was pissed out of his mind to shoot a Somali in cold blood. He would not do it. All the commission had to do is ask him.
Mark Boland does not have standing before the commission. How can this possibly be? When the military police came to Mark Boland's home in Petawawa to arrest him the second time, they did so in front of his wife and children. He hauled him out of his home with his children screaming: "Daddy, what is happening? What is going on?"
This was the kind of treatment afforded the lower deck as differentiated from the treatment afforded the upper deck. That is why there is a morale problem in the Canadian Armed Forces today and people do not have to be rocket scientists to figure it out.