Mr. Speaker, on the issue at hand with regard to detainees, I raised this issue at the end of January with the government with regard to the detainee policy. As we know, there was a great deal of secrecy surrounding this issue as to whether the policy put in place by the government was continuing or not.
Very clearly, we need to have transparency and accountability when it comes to detainees. Why? Because we are in Afghanistan promoting certain values. One of those values clearly is the rule of law. It deals with the issue of prisoners and clearly there needs to be a consistent approach in dealing with this issue. In fact, in the resolution that the House will vote on tomorrow night, we proposed, of course, that we have a NATO-wide approach in dealing with these issues.
My concern at the time, and I raised this in November and again in January, was that we did not know what the policy was. We heard about cases of torture. When someone was captured, we wanted to know what kind of treatment was being carried out. Of course we know what the state of Afghan prisons is, and we are there to improve not only the justice system but also the prison system. In some of them, there are appalling conditions that clearly we would not want anyone to be detained in.
The management of this issue has been fumbled by the government in the past and we wanted to make sure that there was a NATO-wide solution to the issue of detainees. On consistent monitoring, we heard from the government at the time about the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, but it did not have the authority to do the kind of work that needed to be done to track these detainees to ensure that there was no torture taking place. Then the government suspended for a while and it did not of course inform the House that this in fact had taken place.
In the resolution we will vote on tomorrow night, which the government has embraced, we will in fact look at the issue of pursuing a NATO-wide approach to this to make sure that what we are doing is bringing values consistent with human life, and that we are dealing with values in terms of the dignity of individuals regardless of whether they are the enemy.
Therefore, we ought to commit to a greater transparency, to respect for a policy on the taking and transferring of prisoners, and the government has made some movement in that regard. Obviously the support of this resolution, which contains these provisions, is very important. I certainly welcome that now, but when I raised these issues they were not being effectively dealt with at the time.
The government also does not want to indicate when anyone has been captured. The Americans announce when they have captured people. The British announce when they have captured individuals. We still have not done that. When members of the government come before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, of which I am the vice-chair, we do not get the kind of satisfactory answer that we want.
However, I will say for the parliamentary secretary that we are hopeful now, with the embracing of this resolution, that we will see improvement with regard to this issue. Ultimately we are trying to bring the rule of law to Afghanistan. We are trying to improve the conditions for people, whether they be prisoners in the field or wherever they are in terms of the conditions of Afghan prisons.
I know that Correctional Service Canada has been involved to some degree. It is important to have that. We want to be better than the people we are capturing. We are better than these individuals. Therefore, in order to do that, it is important that this be raised in the House.