A Liberal cabinet, yes, and it is the decision of that cabinet that will be reviewed by the inquiry. If it were a wrong decision, that is what it would be.
I do not think the Conservative members are hearing what I am telling them. The conduct of the Liberal government is every bit as much the subject of the inquiry as the conduct of the Conservative government.
That is the reality of this war. The reality of the war is that it was a war that was entered into by a Liberal government on behalf of the people of Canada because of the nature of the attack on 9/11. Further steps were taken by this Parliament, in which we agreed that we would continue and maintain our support for the troops.
Let there be no question, we are supportive of our troops. We are supportive of the efforts that have been made. We are supportive of the determination shown. There is absolutely no allegation, none whatsoever, that any Canadian officer or Canadian soldier was ever involved in the mistreatment of Afghan detainees. That is not the question.
The question before us is, did we take full note of the information, not the evidence but the information, and I stress this word to the minister, the prosecutor for Manitoba who sits across from me, that was reported to the government by a range of sources, not just Mr. Colvin? The emphasis on it all being about Mr. Colvin versus the three generals, and it all being about Mr. Colvin versus Mr. Mulroney, I say with great respect is not the issue. The issue is what information did the Government of Canada have? What did it do with that information and how did it process that information, and why did it take so long to go from hearing the information with respect to the conditions in Afghan prisons and the treatment of prisoners and the decisions that were ultimately made with respect to how those would be reviewed?
I would like to mention two things.
First, we support this motion and we recognize that the Liberal government's work will also be subject to scrutiny in the inquiry proposed by the member for Ottawa Centre. This will not be a partisan review. This review will delve into the Liberal government's handling of the war and that of the Conservative government. We accept that responsibility and are saying so clearly.
Second, there is a fundamental contradiction in the government's position. It says that all kinds of problems made it necessary to change the agreement between Afghanistan and Canada. Yet it refuses to clarify exactly what problems made the change necessary.
That is the contradiction, and that is the issue that we hope will become the focus of the proposed inquiry.
The last point I want to make is this: Why hold a public inquiry? As some members will know, if they have ever paid any attention to some of the things I have said over the years, I am not a huge fan of holding public inquiries every time something goes wrong. I have argued against them in different instances, but it seems to me in this particular case, it is very hard to figure out what the alternative is. Some people say it should be a parliamentary committee. We are dogged by problems in the parliamentary committee. We cannot get access to information. We cannot get access to the same documents. Documents are leaked to journalists. The journalists then report on the documents. It is really quite an unusual situation. A government gives a document to a journalist and the journalist says whatever he or she is going to say about whatever he or she is told, and then the government says that this journalist has the information. Where else would they get the information if they do not get it from a source within the government? Where else would those documents come from. Where else would the unredacted documents come from if they do not come from the government? Where else would they come from?
I am not suggesting that the parliamentary secretary gave the documents to the journalist. I am just saying, where else would they come from? Who else has access to those documents? It is a fascinating question as to how this takes place.
We are then faced with the situation: What other vehicle do we have to get to this central question? Although the members opposite might not like to see it this way, I do think there is a significant question for Canadian foreign and defence policy and our public policy, that is, having faced this difficult situation, are we or are we not prepared to get to the bottom of it?
In every effort that was made, the Military Police Complaints Commission, for example, was told by DND lawyers, “No, you cannot look at this; no, you cannot look at that”.
There does not seem to be any really effective alternative other than to hold a public inquiry to get to the bottom of this question.