Debates of Dec. 1st, 2009

Opposition Motion--Transfer of Afghan Detainees

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Vancouver South.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that was the member's interpretation of whatever may have happened.

Could the government stand up and say, with absolute honesty, that no laws, international or domestic, in Afghanistan have ever been violated?

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I understand the terms of the motion that has been proposed by my friend from Ottawa Centre, it refers to the years 2001 to 2009. It is not confined to the period after the Conservatives took office.

On behalf of our party, I want to make it clear that we support the motion. We understand that the implications of the motion are that the conduct of the previous government will be equally subject to scrutiny as the conduct of the current government. It is important for people to understand that. When I say this is not simply a partisan issue, I know there will be chuckles on the other side of the House. However, the fact is that we in this party are supporting a motion that refers to a public inquiry that would look at the conduct of governments with respect to the question of the transfer of detainees.

The minister and others have risen over and over again to say that the agreement that was negotiated prior to 2006 and signed by General Hillier during the election campaign of 2005-06 on behalf of the Government of Canada, was a flawed agreement. If we listened to the comments that were made by Mr. Colvin, we would certainly come to that conclusion.

As a result of that agreement, we discovered, and over time it was found out, that the Red Cross could not report instances of abuse to Canadian authorities. It could only raise them with Afghan authorities. The Red Cross repeated again over the weekend its very strong view that it retains its credibility and its deep neutrality as an organization because it does not engage in political conversations. It has insisted on that. We also found that there was no ability on the part of Canadian authorities to investigate any issues that have taken place.

My simple point would be that the government cannot really have it both ways. The government cannot say, absolutely convinced, 100% certified and guaranteed, that nothing happened untoward with respect to any detainee who was transferred to Afghan authorities, and then say that the agreement was deeply inadequate and that it spent a year and a half in trying to fix it and make it better, and then reached the conclusion that a whole series of steps needed to be taken to ensure that “problems” were dealt with.

Questions arise. What were the problems? What was it that made the Conservative government decide that there needed to be a change in the agreement? What was it that made the government finally led them to realize that it had to make substantial investments with respect to reviewing, inspecting and investigating the whole structure? What was it that made the government do that?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Liberal bungling. That was the Liberal flawed agreement.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the answer my friend is shouting across the way is “a flawed agreement”. There is no question that it was a flawed agreement. It was an imperfect agreement arrived at by people who were doing their best in the circumstances and who did not fully realize its inadequacies.

I can say to the hon. member, who continues to shake his head because I can hear him doing so, that what he is saying is that it was the government's fault.

I will make it clear. We know how these policies get developed. They get developed by people on the ground and by lawyers who review material which ultimately gets approved or not by cabinet. That is how it works.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

A Liberal cabinet.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

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.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Toronto Centre for his candour. He laid out his comments that this is not about going after the government; it is about having an independent lens, an inquiry, on what happened going back to 2001. I am glad he made that point because it is worth underlining.

In other words, we are not looking just at the present Minister of National Defence and the previous Minister of National Defence in the Conservative government. We are looking at the file. We are looking at what needs to be established regarding what happened and, as the member underlined, what should be happening.

Are we absolutely certain that everything is currently right? The only way we are going to find that out is if we look at all of the facts.

If we are not able to get a public inquiry going now, does the member believe that we will be able to get enough information from the government for the committee to be able to do what the public inquiry should be doing? In other words, is there any other option than a public inquiry in light of the fact that we have a government that is not willing to dispense all of the documents? Would it not be better to have this independence going back to 2001, as the member said?

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if we look for example at what the British government has done on a number of occasions with respect to the conduct of the war in Iraq, if we look at what the American government has done with respect to the conduct of the war in Iraq and with respect to the treatment of prisoners and the issues that have been raised, there is always some kind of process.

I think when we look at the frustrations and the obstacles and difficulties that we have faced with respect to a purely parliamentary inquiry, it is very difficult. Will facts come out? Yes, facts will come out, things will emerge and other stuff will come up and question period will be used. However, these are not perfect vehicles for making decisions with respect to how things were done and how they can be improved.

This is not even about blame. This is about how do we improve public policy. How do we ensure that we will all be able to do a better job, because there will be other Afghanistans? There will be other difficult conflicts and issues.

This is the way we have to go about making better policy, making better decisions and allowing our decision-makers to improve how they do things. It is not a criminal investigation. It is not a criminal inquiry. It is a public inquiry into how do we improve public policy.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, it is very nice to hear the opposition talking about niceties and that this should be a public inquiry, and that it is not about criminal things, this thing and other things.

However, let us look at what actually happened. It is very simple. It started as a war in a country that was completely broken. We started under the Liberal regime, which set up a system that when enemy soldiers were captured, they would be taken there. All of these things were evolutionary.

After we came out with a new agreement in 2007, clearly the people who were on the ground, not the people sitting here in armchairs in this nice country, but the people who were on the ground, said time after time that whatever intelligence they had, they worked on it immediately. As soon as they knew something, everything was done. The committee heard about it and everyone heard about it.

What I do not understand from the members over there is that after one individual gave his assessment, they are basing their entire fight on that one individual.

Why do they not believe the generals, the people who were on the ground?

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether the generals on the ground visited prisons or not.

The simple fact is that we have different sources of information with respect to the general conditions in prisons. I believe absolutely the testimony of the three generals who testified before us, in terms of what their view of the situation was, what their view of the information they were receiving was. There is no doubting anyone's testimony.

I completely believe Mr. Mulroney's testimony when he said that he believes there was no evidence with respect to the treatment of Canadian prisoners. The problem is that we were not at that time in a position to get evidence with respect to the treatment of Canadian prisoners. There was no independent investigation with respect to the allegations of what took place.

The members opposite have criticized Mr. Colvin for his investigatory techniques. All he was trying to do was to get information and pass that information on to the government where it would be assessed for decision-making by government. That is all he could do—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Saint-Jean.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today on the Bloc Québécois' behalf about the proposed public inquiry now before us.

We have to tell it like it is. We are dealing with a cover-up operation the likes of which has never been seen in Canadian history. Moreover, it is being carried out by what is probably Canada's least transparent government ever.

Given the current context, it is understandable that we should be dealing with a number of issues. The government is hiding things from us and preventing various parliamentary committees and commissions from getting to the bottom of things. I think it is important to establish a chronology of events so that those listening can understand the issue.

I could start with the attack on the twin towers in 2001, but I will not. Nevertheless, it did lead to Canadian armed forces intervention in Afghanistan. As in every theatre of operations, an important and urgent issue arose: what to do with detainees.

I will jump instead to 2005, 2006 and 2007, when the opposition was raising questions in the House, even when the Liberals were in power. A lot of questions were asked in the House about the fate of detainees and how they were treated. There were also questions about whether detainees were treated according to the Geneva convention. Every time, we were told that there was no problem, that the Geneva convention was complied with, that detainees were not tortured, that the people who were turned over to the Afghan authorities were monitored in some way, and that everything was fine. That was the message we got.

Even at that point, I could not understand why the government in place was not asking for information more officially and openly in order to reassure people. Everyone understood the importance of this issue and the democratic values that this Parliament and all western parliaments stand for. That is very important. We cannot condemn certain regimes or certain torture practices if we use them ourselves.

There were a lot of questions, and I do not know why, every time the Minister of National Defence or the Minister of Foreign Affairs faced questions in the House, he did not tell his office that he had been asked questions again and that he wanted to know what was going on. But that is not how the government reacted. Instead, it hid the truth.

I am talking about the previous government as well as the current one. We were told there were no problems. To my way of thinking, even back then, the general public, especially in Quebec, felt that there was a problem. The people of Quebec had a very hard time accepting the operation in Afghanistan.

Moreover, I would remind this House that the Bloc Québécois opposed the last two requests to extend the mission in Afghanistan, because of a whole series of problems, including that major problem, of course.

The values of the Parliament of Canada and the legislative assemblies of Quebec and the other provinces are very important. The work done by their members and, in turn, the work done by soldiers in the theatre of operations must be guided by democratic values. Everyone agrees that politicians—the people who make the decisions—have the first and last word about military interventions abroad.

We have a responsibility as individuals. It is a shame that people who want to get to the bottom of this are being accused of not supporting the troops. We say this all the time and we will say it again today: we have absolutely nothing against the troops, who are simply obeying orders. The government tells them what their mission is, when they will leave and when they will come back.

We are not criticizing the troops. We are criticizing the government for trying to cover up its inaction and secrets, and trying to muzzle the opposition. It is accusing us of being like the Taliban and not supporting the troops. That is false.

We have said it many times here and it bears repeating because, just the day before yesterday, the Prime Minister boarded a Canadian frigate and said that he supported the troops and that we did not. That is not true. Even soldiers can be tried under the Geneva convention if it is found that they transferred detainees when there was a high risk of torture. These are fundamental values that we want to defend.

We also want to try to end this war. We say war, but really it is an insurgency. There is a real climate of secrecy. The Afghan population knows it and is starting to be vocal about the fact that the troops there are occupation forces and not liberation forces. If we prove ourselves no better than the Soviets or no better than any other group that tortures people, that has an impact. The counter-insurgency has to be based on fundamental values. If the Afghan public finds that things are not being done properly, and there is talk of that over there, then we will have a hard time resolving this conflict. The Afghans will see that their family and friends are being held like prisoners and being tortured. According to Mr. Colvin, it was farmers and people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. How can we then turn around and say that the values we want to defend are so fine? The Afghans will say they are not so fine because they have an aunt, an uncle or a nephew who was tortured.

This also affects Canada's international policy. How can the Prime Minister staunchly defend human rights when goes to China? The Chinese president will probably reply that he should start by looking at his own record, because to his knowledge, things are not going so well. And he would be right. This weakens Canada's position on the international scene.

So it is important to say that we are worried about it. We in the opposition have been worrying about it since 2005, 2006 and 2007. We have asked many questions. The government tried to calm us down, saying that there was nothing there, when in fact we know very well that, yes, torture did occur. It is probably still going on. Perhaps now, with the second agreement signed with the Afghan government, there is more control over it. However, with the 2005 agreement, there was not enough control or supervision in Afghan prisons, which means that torture did occur. Regardless of what any generals say or what Mr. Mulroney says, regardless of what government officials are going to say on Wednesday afternoon, torture does occur in Afghan prisons and we are not the only ones saying so.

Amnesty International, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Red Cross say so. Everyone says so. The Afghan commission is reporting torture in 98% of cases. So the government cannot tell us that it is not happening. At this time, only the government, its public servants and other people paid by the government are practically the only people saying that prisoners are not being tortured. Everyone else—the opposition, European diplomats, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International and the Red Cross—all agree that torture is taking place. Therefore, this is a very real problem.

Some people have tried to solve the problem and that where it gets interesting because we see that the government's cover-up continues. The Military Police Complaints Commission wanted to carry out a systematic study. It looked at the various court decisions because groups such as Amnesty International had gone before the Federal Court and the Supreme Court. It said it would investigate. The government began by telling the commission's chair, Mr. Tinsley, that his term was coming to an end and that it would not be renewed. That was not good; they wanted to disrupt proceedings. People are beginning to say that the chair of a body such as the Military Police Complaints Commission should finish his inquiry before being replaced. Otherwise, it would be too easy to say to Mr. Tinsley, on the day his term expired, that his job was finished. A new member would be appointed and he would practically have to start all over because he had not heard the first statements of evidence. He has to reacquaint himself with the legal aspects and reread what the witnesses said, and so forth.

That was the first sign of obstructionism by the government. The fact that some witnesses have received legal notice from this government—specifically from the Minister of Justice— threatening them with sanctions if they testify is the second sign of obstructionism.

Not only is the minister threatening them with sanctions, but he is also refusing to table the documents because they represent a threat to national security, according to the information provided in the legal notice. We will speak of national security a little later because that is the excuse behind which the government is hiding. These ministers of the Crown are using national security as a pretext and I will speak of that later. There are a number of facts that have raised doubts. Not only did we have doubts when we questioned the government in 2006 and 2007 but our doubts have been confirmed by the government's conduct with respect to the Military Police Complaints Commission. In fact, the government has paralyzed the commission.

After calling on the government many times to release documents and allow people to testify, the chair was forced to suspend the work of the commission. But the government is now saying that the chair himself suspended the work. When witnesses can no longer testify and documents are not available, what can the chair do? The chair must suspend the work. It was the government that suspended the commission's work, not the commission itself. The government's secretive nature and lack of transparency is becoming more obvious.

I will continue. This is what happened. My colleagues and I believed that, in the interest of defending the values I spoke about at the beginning of my speech, we would have to take over. We told ourselves that the Conservatives could try to cripple a commission, even if it operates at arm's length from the government, as they often say, but it would be more difficult for them to do that to a House of Commons committee. But that is what is going on now.

When the government has the chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission in a stranglehold and is preventing him from doing his work, he has no choice but to suspend the work of the commission. He can complain publicly once or twice, but that stops being effective after a certain point. For two or three weeks, members of Parliament have been pressing the government every day. We want to know the truth. The Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan is doing its work, within the limits that have been imposed on it. But the government is starting to take away our opportunities to discover the truth. It keeps preventing committee members from getting to the truth.

This is the same behaviour the government demonstrated with the commission. But now it is more difficult, since the government must answer questions every day. And every Wednesday afternoon, journalists attend the meetings of the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan. Reports are published in the newspapers. Thus, the government is under some pressure. Yet that does not prevent it from trying to cripple us.

This all started when I moved a motion. My colleague from Ottawa Centre also moved a motion. In it, we said that we wanted to get to the bottom of what happened with Afghan detainees. In the motion I myself moved, I proposed reviewing sections 37 and 38 of the Canada Evidence Act, the two sections that deal with national security.

The first heated exchange began when our first witness, General Watkin, the government's Judge Advocate General, appeared. He has full jurisdiction on the military justice side of things. When the general showed up, everything got off to a bad start. That is what came out in the media too.

In response to the committee's initial questions, the general said that he could not answer. That was exactly what we did not want to hear. We wanted to hold an inquiry so that people would answer our questions and help us get to the bottom of things. Behaviour mirrored that exhibited during the Military Police Complaints Commission hearings. Witnesses were told how far they could go, and for anything beyond that, they were to come up with reasons not to respond. The general said that because of client privilege, he could not provide the information because his client had asked him not to.

He said that he could not break the bond of trust with his client. That is when the arm-wrestling match between the general and me began. We asked Mr. Walsh, the law clerk of the House, to tell us how far we could go during parliamentary committee meetings. Could we question any witness at all? Were witnesses immune? Were we entitled to access to documents on request?

The general responded that he would abide by rulings of the Federal Court or the Supreme Court of Canada and that he did not want to go any farther. The law clerk of the House confirmed that, during a session of a parliamentary committee, we have the right to interpret the law as we wish, and witnesses are required to answer questions.

I resolved the situation by suggesting that the general consult with his client, the Government of Canada, and come back with the latter's response to my interpretation of parliamentary law, which takes precedence over court rulings. We have to have the freedom to speak, and we have to have access to all of the documents. So things got off to a bad start with the first witness.

Then the generals arrived and they all said the same thing. It then became clear how unbelievable the situation was. These generals did not hold back. I even found them to be a bit arrogant. They said they had access to all the documents. And I am not talking about redacted documents, where even the date at the top has been crossed out and all that is left is the initial salutation and final “thank you” because the rest is completely or almost completely blacked out. Those are censored documents.

The generals told us they consulted the documents and did not see any problem. They were all singing from the same song sheet. I have never seen one general contradict another. The three generals became the three tenors of denial. To their knowledge nothing happened and nothing will change.

We began having serious doubts about the government's credibility. These people are not going to accuse themselves. What is more, they have a version that we cannot verify. It would be like a defence lawyer having documents in his or her possession that the crown attorney did not have. Some say they have certain information in their documents, but we cannot take action because we have not seen those documents. We are not on an equal footing in this situation.

We asked to see the documents, but everyone says there will be no documents. For two weeks now we have been asking the government to provide us with uncensored documents. I do not know if those documents are available today, but as of yesterday, we still had not received them. The inquiry is proceeding. The Judge Advocate General, the generals, Mr. Colvin and David Mulroney have all appeared before the committee, but we still have not received any documents. So we are being forced to proceed blindly, in the dark. Has there ever been anything like it? It is very difficult. Quite simply, they are making it almost impossible for us to do our job.

So then Mr. Colvin appeared before the committee and caused quite an uproar. I thought his testimony was excellent—unfortunately for him, one might say, but fortunately for us. Since I see that I have only one minute left, I will speed things up a little. I had more prepared.

So Mr. Colvin really caused an uproar. We are now grappling with the need for a public inquiry. We have no choice; we have no access to the documents. Our witnesses are being muzzled and we have only seven minutes to ask them questions. As soon as we have finished, the committee moves on to another party, which also has seven minutes, and so on. Our witnesses can duck and weave all they want, but a public inquiry is needed, one with an independent judge who can access the documents and who will compel witnesses to give their evidence with full immunity.

This is what is needed at this time and what we are calling for. That is why we support the motion for a public inquiry.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to detainee transfer, in reply to a question, the government has said that there is absolutely no evidence, that only one person has claimed there were problems.

Mr. Smith, who was the cause for the government to stop transfers of detainees, provided evidence. He wrote extensively in the Globe and Mail. In regard to a detainee he interviewed, he said, as a result of the abuse by the Afghans:

I saw the marks of torture on their flesh. They told me how they had been beaten, choked, frozen, electrocuted, all kinds of these horrible, horrible tortures. And those stories, I have to say, lined up with absolutely everything else that I was hearing in the system. The jailers who held these men complained to me that by the time the Afghan intelligence system was finished with them, that they were often broken husks, you know. Men who stumbled into the jail cells in chains and who couldn't hold their bowels...had to be cleaned up by their jailers. And the jailers were complaining because they said...it wasn't their job to take care of this so-called human garbage.

What does my colleague think of that? Is that evidence to him that there were problems in the system, or is Mr. Smith just another accomplice of the Taliban?

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Ottawa Centre for his question as it allows me to finish my remarks.

That is what Mr. Smith said. Personally, I believe what he said. I also believe Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Colvin. The latter sent a report to Mr. Mulroney that was published by the CBC. In the report, almost everything is blacked out, with the exception of certain areas where it is possible to read that prisoners were beaten with cables, electrocuted and had their fingers cut and burned. This was pointed out to Mr. Mulroney. I asked Mr. Mulroney this question and I even tabled the document. I asked him if he had seen this document. He told me he had.

So how can he claim that there was no torture? Afterwards, Mr. Mulroney's defence was that Canadian soldiers capture prisoners, hand them over to the authorities and we know that they are not tortured. In the same sentence, he admitted that there is no monitoring system. Therefore, they cannot be monitored in prison. How can he say that?

Mr. Mulroney, an experienced diplomat, acknowledged that under the Geneva Convention, prisoners cannot be turned over to those who use torture. The convention goes further and states that prisoners cannot be transferred if there is a risk of torture. Everyone agrees that there is a risk of torture. Not just Mr. Smith agrees. We also have the Colvin report, submitted to Mr. Mulroney, that describes the abuse detainees were subjected to.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, there were so many misrepresentations in my colleague's testimony that I cannot possibly cover them all.

The document he showed Mr. Mulroney was from mid-2007 after we were already taking action. He said that they had asked for the documents by December 2. He should check his calendar. It is not December 2. The sanctions that we were to be talked about was if somebody broke the law in testimony, not simply that he or she would testify. There are many others, but I will go to a question.

He said whom he believes. He left out the generals. He has called the generals arrogant. My colleague from Vancouver South has repeated allegations that the testimony of the generals was morally weak and legally flimsy. He said that they were singing off the same song sheet, implying that perhaps there was some collusion. Maybe they are singing off the same song sheet because they are simply telling the truth.

Is my colleague calling the generals liars? Is he calling them morally weak and legally flimsy, or does he put some faith in the Canadian Forces and the leadership that he claims he does?

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the parliamentary secretary, because he often gives me the chance to reopen the debate. He never misses an opportunity to do so.

Is he saying that there have been other cases of torture since the second agreement took effect? Is that what he is saying? He says that my dates are wrong. Torture took place before and after 2007. Is that clear enough? That is the information we have now. I did not say the generals had lied, I said they were arrogant. They said, “We have the documents and you MPs do not.” That is what they said. We are unable to prove anything because we do not have the documents, except for ones that have been heavily redacted.

The motion we put forward has to do with uncensored documents. We want those documents so that everyone is on a level playing field. So far, the government has refused to give them to us.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I find this extremely dramatic. It is clear what the Conservatives are trying to do. They are draping themselves in the flag and trying to tell us that as soon as we ask questions, we are automatically against the army. There is a major difference, and I do not understand why they are applauding, because it makes no sense. Just because we are asking questions and trying to comply with the Geneva convention, that does not mean we are automatically against the generals or the army as a whole.

On the contrary, we supported the war in Afghanistan because we wanted to send our troops, our children, there to defend democracy. But the problem is that the government is practising the exact opposite of what it is preaching in Afghanistan. We sent our children to Afghanistan to bring democracy to that country. The problem is that in Canada, the government is not even able to respect the very essence of democracy. If the government has nothing to hide, it would give us the documents we need.

What does my colleague think of the obscurantist attitude the Conservatives are taking in order to hide the truth from us? If they had absolutely nothing to hide, they would turn over the documents.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I will add that if the Conservatives had the will, they would agree to a public inquiry. I see that the Prime Minister is in China today. He will surely have problems convincing the Chinese president that human rights are not being respected in China. The president will respond that the same thing is going on in Canada. The Chinese have the same attitude as the Conservative government. They keep people in the dark there as well. They do not want to say so. They are hiding behind their ways of doing things, and the Canadian government is doing the same thing with the detainees. A public inquiry is needed because we are being prevented from doing our work. Even though we still have our freedom of expression, a public inquiry is needed to get to the bottom of things.

In the meantime, the committee will continue to do its work, but right now, everyone knows that the government wants to hide the truth from the public. That is the sad reality.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, does the member feel the government is simply fighting against the inquiry primarily because it desperately wants to renew the commitment beyond the 2011 deadline? Having an inquiry will turn more Canadians against the war. Does he think that is a possibility?

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was asked a similar question the other day on Radio-Canada, and I heard the statements made by various ministers and the Prime Minister that our mission would end in 2011. But I added that pressure on the Canadian government from NATO allies would also increase. One thing is certain at present; the Canadian government is hiding the truth because it thinks that it would have a negative effect on the mission in Afghanistan and especially on public opinion. In such circumstances, people will say that they are not in favour.

I would tell the government that Conservative members are taking a risk by ignoring all the members of this House and all Canadians who want to know the truth. We intend to pursue this until we get the truth. And if the government keeps stalling us here, we hope to be able to continue this search for the truth by means of a public inquiry.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to support the motion, which I seconded. It states:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should, in accordance with Part I of the Inquiries Act, call a Public Inquiry into the transfer of detainees in Canadian custody to Afghan authorities from 2001 to 2009.

First, I should address the fact that the spread of the dates here obviously coincides with the commencement of Canadian activity in Afghanistan starting in 2001, continuing to this day, the longest military engagement in which Canada has participated. The second world war was shorter than that as was the first world war. We have a long-standing Canadian engagement in military activity and military combat abroad.

There is the importance of Canada doing this kind of activity in a way that complies with our obligations as a country, to ourselves, to the international community and, first and foremost, to our soldiers who are asked to conduct this very dangerous and important activity in the context of our international human rights obligations. However, we need to know whether we put the systems in place to meet these obligations.

I will start with a quote from Brigadier-General Ken Watkin, Judge Advocate General, who appeared before the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan on November 4 of this year. He set out the legal framework of the obligation about which we are concerned. He says, “The prohibition against torture is a peremptory and non-derogable norm of international law”, and here is the nub. He says:

The transfer of detainees to a real risk of torture or ill-treatment is contrary to international humanitarian law, also known as the law of war or the law of armed conflict. It is a specialized body of law that governs the conduct of Canada, its officials, and its military forces during the armed conflict in Afghanistan.

That avoids all the semantics of whether the Geneva Convention applies or whether there were prisoners of war, or any of those diversions we have heard government members engage in from time to time, even claiming in one debate in the House that it was not a war at all. Why the members would do that I do not know. It certainly is a diversion from the reality, as Brigadier-General Watkin pointed out to the Afghanistan committee.

We need an inquiry to find out whether the systems that Canada put in place from day one meet our international legal obligations. The government tries to fog this up in attacks on the patriotism of individual members of Parliament when we question a general. I do not know when this became something that was wholier than thou, that when people criticize a general, they are unpatriotic. This seems to be more the kind of thing we would hear in a more militaristic state than we have in Canada.

We have the right to debate these issues, not that I question any particular statement of a general. However, surely this a country where parliamentarians and the civilian authority is the authority that is important. We honour and respect the work of our soldiers and their sacrifices. We saw a national outpouring during the week of November 11, in which all Canadians recognized that.

However, this is not the point. In establishing this mission in Afghanistan and then carrying out this mission, the primary responsibility of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is to ensure that our international legal obligations are looked after. The senior military authorities in the Department of National Defence and the minister are primarily responsible. The question is this. Is the 2005 agreement, which I think is universally regarded as being inadequate, and our practices now in keeping with our international obligations?

The call for an inquiry is a call for us to find that out in an atmosphere where there is an objective and independent review of the facts and circumstances that were known or should have been known to the government at the time in question. It is not about attacks on individual public servants that are taking place regularly in this House and in the wider public. There needs to be an objective voice and an objective weighing of the issues and concepts.

We are not talking necessarily about evidence. One would not know from listening to the Minister of National Defence that we are talking about a criminal prosecution being undertaken by Richard Colvin. He was doing his job. His job was to report to Canadian authorities on the very things on which he reported. He used the sources that were available to him as part of any normal activity of a Canadian diplomat or political officer in the situation he was in.

Let us not forget that Richard Colvin replaced Canadian diplomat Glynn Berry who, four months previously, was killed by an IED. Mr. Colvin was a brave and courageous Canadian who went to do a job for his country in Afghanistan and is being vilified daily in the House of Commons by the government. That is a shame.

David Mulroney, to his credit, acknowledged the courage, bravery and contribution of Richard Colvin in his work in Kandahar for the Canadian government. As I say, to his credit, Mr. Mulroney's testimony acknowledged that. In fact, he said when the changes were made in 2007, they relied on Mr. Colvin and his work as part of the whole picture of what was going on in Afghanistan.

Mr. Mulroney does not share the view of the Minister of National Defence and others in the government who have done some damage to Mr. Colvin's reputation, but not enough to persuade Canadians that an inquiry is not necessary. In fact, the majority of Canadians, according to a recent poll, support the need for an independent public inquiry into what went on with respect to the handling of detainees.

We hear people from time to time ask why anybody would care, that this is about Afghanistan, a backward country, that all the people are Taliban and they do not have any regard for Canadian lives and why should Canadians care about them. That is part of a theme that runs counter to the call for an inquiry and for Canadians raising concerns and believing that there should be concern.

Since Mr. Colvin was the first one to bring this up in his testimony, I could do no better than to quote the rhetorical question he asked and then answered before the committee on Afghanistan. He asked, “Even if Afghan detainees were being tortured, why should Canadians care?” He gave five compelling reasons. “First, our detainees are not what the intelligence services would call “high-value targets”, such as IED bomb makers, al-Qaeda terrorists or Taliban commanders”.

In other words, the people who were being gathered up were not necessarily as a result of intelligence efforts and choosing individuals to arrest because they were people who were picked up by intelligence sources. They were picked up by conventional forces doing routine military operations. Many of them, as he pointed out, would not have been targets of investigation.

This has been confirmed by later meetings with Afghanistan security officials, who complained that they had to release many of the people who were passed over to them because they did not have any supporting evidence or information as to why they were detained. They were not Taliban. The indication is that the NDS and others have a very high knowledge base of who is and is not Taliban. His conclusion was that a lot of innocent people may have been handed over for severe torture.

He went on to say that the second reason we should care is that seizing people and rendering them for torture is a very serious violation of international and Canadian law. He said that Canada has always been a powerful advocate of international law and human rights, that that is a keystone of who we are as Canadians and what we have always stood for as a people and a nation. He said that to do so would be contrary to our own stated policies. In April 2007 the Prime Minister said publicly that Canadian military officers do not send anybody at all to be tortured. That was indeed our policy, but behind the military's wall of secrecy, in Mr. Colvin's view, that is unfortunately what we were doing. He said that even if all of the Afghans who were detained had been Taliban, it would still have been wrong for them to be tortured.

The Canadian military is a proud and professional organization, thoroughly trained in the rules of war and the correct treatment of prisoners. The question is, at that time, what was the level of knowledge in Afghanistan of government officials and, by implication, the military? Was it sufficient to render a view that there was a real risk of torture or ill treatment if detainees were handed over? That is a question that has to be answered, not by me or by the government here today. We have heard people's views on it. We have heard Mr. Mulroney's view on it. We have heard the generals' views on it. Whether there was evidence of any individual detainee who was handed over by Canada and had been subsequently tortured is not the question, whether there was proof of torture of a particular individual. In fact, the system was such that it was almost impossible to have such proof.

What Mr. Mulroney said to the committee last week was that after signing the second memorandum, and we are talking about May of 2000, a database of detained prisoners was developed. In other words, he confirmed what had been said by Mr. Colvin and others, that prior to then, we were not tracking or monitoring the prisoners, and therefore we could not answer that question ourselves. Whom do we rely on to determine whether or not there was a real risk of torture?

Mr. Colvin, in writing his reports, doing his job and relying on the sources that he was required to rely on, said as follows in an affidavit to the MPCC:

--I obtained information on detainee issues from a wide range of sources. This included diplomats from other embassies, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], officials from UNAMA [United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan], military officers at ISAF, human-rights organizations, journalists--

--and we have seen some of those reports--

--and intelligence sources. It would be normal, appropriate and necessary for me in the context to rely on such sources in the course of my duties. All this information was provided on a confidential basis, and the specific sources cannot be disclosed in an Affidavit.

He said the same thing to the committee and what happened? He was attacked by the government for it. He did not even tell us who his sources were. Of course, the names of the sources are confidential, and that is totally understandable.

Why do we need a public inquiry? Because the organizations to which he referred and the evidence that was laid out, and previous speakers have referred to it, indicated that the United States Department of State, Human Rights Watch, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and other agencies confirm the level of torture and ill treatment in Afghanistan jails was, to quote some, commonplace.

Was there a real risk of torture? That is something that may have to be decided objectively. Did we have procedures in place to prevent that from happening? It is a given that we did not. Obviously the changes that were made indicated that, and some of the things that Mr. Colvin has said were used in doing that.

A Globe and Mail editorial last week talked about four questions, and these are four questions that we believe can only be answered in an objective inquiry.

Here is what the Globe and Mail editorial said:

The federal government's dissembling on abuse Afghan detainees suffered after they left the hands of Canadian Forces is now transparent.

The government must be held to account, and needs to answer these questions: What did the government know, and when?

That is the fundamental question that has not been answered. All we have had is pot shots being taken at opposition members and at diplomats who were doing their job to try and get this information forward.

The article also asked who else inside the government was expressing concern. The government is saying that Mr. Colvin the one person. I frankly do not believe that Mr. Colvin was the only one who expressed any concern about the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan prisons. How do we find that out? We will not find it out by going on fishing expeditions in a parliamentary committee but by having a full public inquiry where someone can do the job.

The article also asked what the extent and the result of the investigation was once undertaken. The article is talking about information before April 2007. Another questions was how widespread was the culture of secrecy. We do know that other countries such as the U.K. and the Netherlands that have been engaged in this activity had open, transparent and comprehensive policies. They had policies which followed up on their detainees and made proper reports.

While all the information was being kept secret, the minister of defence of the day in 2006-07 said there was no problem because the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC, was monitoring the prisoners and the ICRC would tell us if anything was going wrong. That mantra was presented to the House of Commons month after month until finally the International Committee of the Red Cross had enough and made it public that not only did it not monitor prisoners, but it could not do that. It only tells the Afghan government if it sees anything.

I do not even think the Conservative government was able to notify the Red Cross of what prisoners it had because of its poor record keeping and it failed--

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

That was the previous government.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the member is saying that was the previous government. If that was the previous government and if what the member is saying is true, then that would also be part of the subject of the inquiry.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Jack, you've got to get to the truth.