Mr. Speaker, I have a question of privilege to raise regarding statements made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the House.
As the result of recent media reports and statements by the Prime Minister's Office, I believe the minister has been less than truthful with the House about the government's detainee policy in Afghanistan. Specifically, I believe that in answering the question I posed on Thursday, November 15, 2007, which appears on page 935 of Hansard, the Minister of Foreign Affairs misled the House.
I asked whether the government had the capacity to track detainees and I raised doubts about whether the current agreement on the transfer of detainees was being followed.
In response, the minister assured me:
We released yesterday all of the details about what we are doing right now and what we did in the past. It is very clear. It is very transparent.
It was recently revealed that all transfers of detainees in Afghanistan stopped on November 5, 2007. I posed my question nine days later and the minister made no mention of this change. I believe the Minister of Foreign Affairs deliberately misled the House because he did not provide all the information at that time that was available to him.
The updated agreement on the transfer of prisoners was coordinated by the Department of Foreign Affairs, and I have an affidavit that was filed in Federal Court to this effect. I will table that document if you wish, Mr. Speaker.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs is the minister responsible for this policy and if there were any change in the protocol for detainees, he should have provided a fulsome response to my question. If the minister truly believed that he could not give a full response because of operational security, he should have told the House that. Instead the minister went out of his way to say that he was releasing “all of the details” and that he was being “very transparent”.
If the minister wishes to inform the House that he was misinformed, I would like to give him an opportunity to do so. Failing that, Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to consider the matter. Should you find a prima facie breach of privilege, I would be prepared to move the appropriate motion so this matter could be dealt with by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.