Mr. Speaker, on January 16 the Department of National Defence said that Canadian soldiers would treat any captured prisoners as POWs until a special tribunal determined their status. The next day the minister of defence said that we would hand over prisoners to the United States without holding tribunals, and in fact we did so. Now the Minister of Foreign Affairs is asking the United States to set up tribunals that we did not need.
My question for the Minister of Foreign Affairs is this. If we did not need tribunals two weeks ago why do we need them today?