Mr. Chair, I am going to be doing a brief preamble that is related to some of the questions I am going to ask, but I will primarily be focusing on questions this evening. I thank the minister and his staff from the Canadian Armed Forces for being here this evening, allowing us to perform one of these important accountability functions in Parliament.
Earlier this month we had a non-confidence motion in the minister, which was put forward by the Conservatives. We, in the New Democratic Party, supported that motion because of the conflict of interest problem that we believe the minister still has with regard to his role in Afghanistan and the varying stories that he has told about that role, and that is related to the question of Canada's complicity in torture in Afghanistan in the transfer of detainees. This has become much more important today, as we argued that it would. I am not going to talk about that conflict tonight because we have another complaint from our leader, the member for Outremont, with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, which we hope will be followed up on.
Why this has become extremely important this week is the fact that the minister, on Friday, March 31, announced the extension of our Canadian mission in Iraq until the end of June. At that time, there was a shift in the Canadian role. Whereas previously we had been advising, assisting, and training only the Iraqi Kurds, we now apparently have taken on a role in advising, assisting, and training Iraqi government forces. What we have just seen in a publication on May 25 are the disturbing photos by Iraqi photojournalist, Ali Arkady, of the allegations of torture, very brutal treatment of prisoners in Iraq by the government forces, including extrajudicial killings. There are actual photographs of killing of prisoners by military forces.
My question for the minister is very much an important question today. What specific measures has the minister taken to ensure that Canada's current role in training and assisting the Iraqi government forces does not make us complicit in the use of torture, which was documented by those pictures published in the Toronto Star on May 25?