Mr. Speaker, on March 23 during question period I asked several questions of the Minister of National Defence. I pointed out that he had already misled the House and had to apologize and that it appeared he had done so again, and I called for his resignation.
How just a little bit of time causes things to evolve. Since then, it is not just the defence minister who is now missing in action who has misled the House, we have had changing stories, shifting sands from the Conservative government on the issue of the Afghan detainees since that time. Virtually every day the Conservatives have changed their story.
The Conservatives, for instance, were warned of possible human rights abuses in Afghan prisons as early as last year, and the number of disturbing reports grows with every passing day, but the government continues to deny the existence of a problem. To make matters worse, as I just mentioned, the Minister of National Defence has been missing in action in this House. Every single question that has been directed to the Minister of National Defence has been answered by another member of the Conservative cabinet.
If the Prime Minister does not have enough confidence in his own defence minister to allow him to answer questions in the House, how can he possibly allow that defence minister to remain the leader of our armed forces? The Prime Minister must fire the national defence minister and appoint a new one who hopefully will get to the bottom of this issue.
Let me give a few salient points. Every single one of the national defence minister's assertions regarding the Afghan detainees and the assertions of the Conservative government itself has been contradicted at every turn by top military officials, international organizations and the media.
We learned they denied the existence of a report on the state of Afghan prisons authored by Canadian diplomats. Then lo and behold, the report was found. They denied the presence of torture and human rights abuses in Afghan jails. Then media reports proved that there were numerous accounts of instances of torture and abuse. The diplomats' report contained blacked out sections. Then it was revealed that the blacked out sections contained information confirming widespread abuse and torture. Now the Information Commissioner is investigating why such critical sections of that report were censored when they present no threat to national security.
The Conservative government and the Minister of National Defence claimed there was no evidence that Afghan authorities were blocking access to prisons, but days earlier the head of the human rights commission in Kandahar said that while legally his commission had permission to visit prisoners, the Afghan authorities in those prisons do not permit it.
The defence minister suddenly announced a new detainee monitoring agreement had been reached, but it was to the surprise of the foreign affairs minister and Canada's chief of defence staff. The next day the Prime Minister said that no such deal had been concluded.
They then changed tactics and claimed that Correctional Service of Canada officials had been monitoring detainees all along. Then officials in Canada and Afghanistan contradicted these claims, clarifying that the two Correctional Service of Canada officials were there to conduct training and improve prison conditions, not to monitor detainees.
I ask simply--