Mr. Speaker, I understand I have seven minutes left.
Before the House moved to question period and routine proceedings, I had an opportunity to review some of the comments that were made to the House during debate by the Minister of Foreign Affairs that I think bear repeating. He specifically made the point that the 2005 agreement relating to the release of Afghan detainees was inadequate.
I am trying to understand why we had to change it in 2007 if, in the Conservatives' view, there was no torture, there was no evidence, there were no allegations and nobody knew of any torture. Why would he characterize it as having been inadequate unless there was in fact a problem? It is almost contradictory for him to describe it as inadequate. I only raise that as a point of interest.
During debate this morning, the Minister of National Defence also addressed the House. He started off by saying that the motion to call for a public inquiry into this matter before us on the alleged torture of Afghan detainees was partisan driven. He said that an inquiry is not necessary, and we pretty well went downhill from there. He also made arguments that we have had a few other processes go on. He referred to the fact there was not one single specific allegation of torture, even though we have allegations of torture from a number of sources.
In the special committee, which he described as having a fair and open process, we know that no documents have been provided to the members of the committee. However, the witnesses who came before the committee all had access to the documents. I wonder how a committee member could possibly be able to ask informed questions if information were being provided by witnesses based on certain documents that the committee members themselves did not have. It just does not compute.
It has also been confirmed that there have been others, including journalists, who have had this information. Amnesty International has had the documents, but committee members have not had the documents. Yet it has been said many times during the debate today that the committee is controlled by the opposition and that it can do anything it wants. That apparently is not the case, since the committee itself has not been able to have access to these documents. We have heard excuses such as they had to be translated and, of course, they had to be redacted.
Today we just had the point of order from the member for Scarborough—Rouge River pursuant to a quote that so many have used, including the Minister of National Defence, that they can only give us the documents they are legally able to give us. For the first time today in question period there was a specific reference to legislation, pursuant to which he would make that statement, and that was the Canada Evidence Act.
Based on the knowledge of the member for Scarborough—Rouge River, who was involved in an amendment to that particular act, that act does not supercede the powers of Parliament and its committees to call for a person's papers or records. Thus it could very well be that the Minister of National Defence has misled the House. It could be inadvertent.
Right now, as it stands, the committee will only be entitled to redacted documents. This is a problem that must be resolved.
When the Minister of National Defence spoke about this, he said that our priority should be the detainees. That was one of his lead-ins, but then he said that there have been a number of proceedings that have dealt with this before. The one that he used as an example was the April 2006 Canadian Forces inquiry, which concluded that members of the Canadian Forces had treated detainees in a professional fashion.
I do not know what that has to do with the matter before us, because the question is not how Canadian Forces treated detainees, but how the Afghan authorities treated detainees who were turned over to them by Canadian Forces. There is a difference. I do not understand why the Minister of National Defence would even go there. It just does not make sense.
With regard to whether there is other evidence, I do not know what the rules of the game are with regard to embedded journalist. However, I want to put on the record that I have received information, and I will not give any names because I think there is censorship on embedded journalists before and after they are there. There films and records of, in this case, one Canadian soldier with a detainee on the phone who is advised that the Afghan authorities want to execute the detainee. The order from military command was to release him.
I have a feeling what is happening, as the government continues to stonewall and deny the fact that there have been substantive and credible allegations, is it is starting come out, and it may very well come out. The government needs to be aware of that.
We need to answer these questions. What did the military command know and when? Who knew of the allegations of torture other than Mr. Colvin? What other evidence exists and how widespread the matter was?
We need an inquiry. We need a process to get to the facts, to get to the truth, to get out of this partisan environment that the government has created and has frustrated the operations of the committee. There are clear disagreements on facts. This is worth resolving and therefore it would restore our reputation.
For those reasons, we need to support a public inquiry.