Madam Speaker, my colleague from Verchères—Les-Patriotes gave a very good illustration of the most crucial issue.
I believe that the main issues at stake here, beyond any other considerations, are trust and credibility. Indeed, in the sequence of events, one might wonder, for example, about the communications between the various government authorities, including between the Department of National Defence and the Privy Council. I think this is one of the things that will have to be reviewed.
The Prime Minister stated categorically that he was informed only on Tuesday morning of something that had been going on for more than a week. I find it very troubling that no one in his political or government entourage informed him or had access to this information. That is the second point.
There are several elements, but there is the minister, his statements, his contradictions and the motivations behind all that. There is the Prime Minister and the fact that he was not informed. There is also the types of communications. We will come back to the substance of the matter later on, but in the meantime the credibility of a minister and the confidence of parliament and of the people in that minister is an important issue.
Third, we must know whether or not Canada is honouring its international commitments and what happened exactly with regard to the prisoners taken in Afghanistan.
These questions remain unanswered. The fact that we are trying to shed some light on the false statements made by a minister, whatever the motivations were, does not mean that we will forget everything else. I am sure that some people are concerned. We saw today that the Deputy Prime Minister was not very comfortable talking about the Privy Council's involvement in this whole matter. It is something that must be cleared up.
I am convinced that we will have questions to ask through the members of this committee, which will have to report to the House, and I hope the House will have another opportunity to speak to this matter. A group of us will study the matter more closely, but I am sure that it is a matter of concern for all members of the House.
The main thing is that we are in a situation of wondering how we will be able to do our job if anybody can come to the House at any time and tell us any old thing, rather than the truth.
We know very well, as I have demonstrated just now with several quotes from the words of the minister in this House Monday night, that he was making use of the conditional tense and making the capture of prisoners in Afghanistan seem to be a hypothetical situation, while knowing that it had happened, while in possession of that information. I have trouble accepting that.
How can we have confidence on some sort of sliding scale? Sometimes we will be able to trust him, and sometimes not. Is this common practice, for a minister to come to the House and not tell the truth? If this is not general practice, there will have to be some consequences.
I can understand that the Chair has given some benefit of the doubt. Parliamentary privileges are at stake, and a situation like this lays our ability to work properly for our constituents open to question. I hope some light will be cast on this, but the government must not think that it is not going to be required to account for other issues in this connection just because the matter has been referred to a committee.
If they think this is a way to avoid the whole thing, they are mistaken. There are many unanswered questions still, not only about the minister's attitude, but also about the attitude of the government.