Mr. Speaker, the opposition motion before us today is quite simply a response to a motion adopted by the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan on November 23, calling on the government to table a number of documents.
I understand that this motion is coming before the House at this point in the debate because the members of the special committee are using every possible means to try to conduct their investigation, and, as I will demonstrate, they are facing a number of obstacles. I believe that a motion approved by Parliament would put a bit more pressure on a government that is not very transparent—opaque, if you will—and also extremely isolated.
I just want to address the issue of the government's non-transparency and isolation. I believe that it is important to review the facts. It all started in 2005, 2006 and 2007, when the opposition members in this House asked the government questions about the treatment of Afghan detainees. When I refer to that period, hon. members will understand that I am referring to both the Liberal regime and the Conservative regime.
The response was always that there was no problem, that international laws applied and that there was no torture. As the years went by, reporters conducted some very serious investigations that contradicted what the government was saying.
That is why we must get to the bottom of things today, because a certain commission known as the Military Police Complaints Commission decided to conduct a full investigation into the issue. The commission faced major obstacles from the government, a bit like the obstacles the special committee is facing today: non-disclosure of documents, censored documents, witnesses who were intimidated or gagged, and so on.
What happened is that the Military Policy Complaints Commission was forced to stop its work, because the government did not want certain witnesses to appear and did not want to disclose certain documents unless they were completed censored.
The special committee decided to take over because we felt it was important. We took over, and now, we are dealing with pretty much the same behaviour, except that the government is having a much harder time because it has to deal with the opposition every day during question period.
Just now, I was talking about reporters. They do an excellent job of relaying public opinion, and that puts pressure on the government to change. We have not seen the end of this issue yet; we have been working on it every day. I was in the foyer before coming in to give my speech, and the situation was changing by the minute. We want to speed things up because we are about to wrap up the session. We have to uncover the truth. If the government thinks that we are going to put things off until the end of January just because the session ends tomorrow, it has another think coming. We have a job to do, and we must get to the bottom of this.
The government is not being transparent. It is on its own here because it has one theory, and pretty much everyone else has the opposite theory. All of the international organizations operating in Afghanistan, not to mention other groups, regularly turn up evidence of torture. There is plenty of evidence that it has happened.
I would like to point out that the Geneva convention covers more than just torture. One of the conditions for transferring detainees is that they not be tortured. However, there is another condition that involves avoiding the risk of torture. At this point, it is safe to say that everyone except the government acknowledges that there is a risk of torture and that torture occurs. Yesterday, the chief of defence staff, General Natynczyk, confirmed that there had been a case of torture.
We are absolutely convinced that there have been more such cases and that we, along with the people of Canada and Quebec, are witnessing a massive cover-up operation. I believe that the government will eventually pay the political price. What we have before us today is similar to the November 23 motion.
I would now like to describe the obstacles that the special committee on Afghanistan is facing.
The committee asked for a series of six documents, and asked to have them by December 2. As of today, we have received only two of the six documents we requested. Furthermore, these two documents are heavily censored. I cannot show these documents here in the House, but these reports are from the first series. These documents were presented during Mr. Colvin's testimony. But entire pages are blacked out.
I told the Minister of National Defence, when he appeared before the Standing Committee on National Defence, that this kind of page should not take much time to translate. A blacked-out page does not take very long to translate, and this keeps members from fulfilling their duty to investigate very serious allegations and to investigate what the chief of staff revealed yesterday.
These documents are very heavily censored. The government is invoking all kinds of national security clauses and dangers for soldiers. But the government employees who have testified, they have access to the uncensored documents. Members can picture the situation: the people before us had access to all of the uncensored documents. The generals even bragged about having seen the documents. They implied that we had not seen the documents because we were only members of Parliament, and that they held the truth, and that we did not have it. That is what was going on.
We cannot accept that documents are censored at this point. How can we adequately question the witnesses? How can we truly understand what is going on if we do not have access to these documents, and if the government has intentionally postponed their release? It is postponed again and again. That is why I thought it was necessary to say from the beginning that just because the House is adjourning tomorrow does not mean that everything will stop until the end of January. The Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan is discussing the possibility of sitting during the holiday period to continue examining and getting to the bottom of things.
I would like to come back to the point of order raised earlier, because I think it is important. It was raised earlier regarding the Minister of Justice. The first witness to appear before the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan was the government's judge advocate general, General Watkins. What happened at the commission meeting also happened at the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan. Indeed, from the beginning of the questions, the general told us that, because of his relationship with his client, he could not disclose certain things. That is when things fell apart. We therefore decided to look into what our rights are, as parliamentarians, as members, compared to the legal rights of a judge advocate general defending the government's case. I should point out that the client with whom he had a privileged relationship was the Government of Canada.
We have raised some very important points and I think it is important to talk about them again. We, as members of Parliament, represent the grand inquest. Under the Constitution, the members represent the grand inquest for the House of Commons. We are the ones to decide to get to the bottom of matters. We are elected. We have the legitimacy of having been elected in our respective ridings. It is therefore our responsibility to get to the bottom of things, in our respective areas of interest, when we think something is not right. That is what parliamentary democracy is all about.
In the British tradition, the government is the defender, the protector of the realm, and we are caught in the middle. Who has first right? We believe that the right of parliament should take precedence. The legislative counsel of the House of Commons said we must interpret the legislation in a way that respects every aspect of the Constitution and furthermore, that when a law applies to the work of Parliament, the House is the only one that can decide how that law applies to it.
That is rather clear. It means that when provisions such as section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act are invoked, which prevents the disclosure of matters for reasons of national security, we believe, and so does the legislative counsel of the House, that it can be challenged.
The legislative counsel goes further: “If a law allows ministers or the government to conceal information from Parliament, that will mean that the government may invoke the law and avoid its obligation to account to the House. ” This would be unconstitutional because it is contrary to the fundamental principle of our parliamentary system. Moreover, the government's obligation to account to the House is a constitutional principle that cannot be set aside by mere legislation.
It is clear to us that when a committee asks for documents and especially when it asks that they be uncensored, the documents provided should not be censored. When a committee asks for documents within a period of time fixed by a motion, the documents should be provided within the time specified and not weeks or days later. Today is December 10 and the set of documents to which I referred earlier was to have been submitted before December 2.
We believe that Parliament's right must prevail, otherwise democracy no longer functions. A government might decide to withhold documents to protect its ministers. These are the very words of the legislative counsel who says it would be unconstitutional to do so.
Immunity is increasingly under attack. Parliamentary immunity is the means used by democracies to avoid being taken to court every five minutes by those with interests different from ours, which are to serve the people and democracy. The heads of major corporations may not agree with us. If restrictions are placed on what we say in the House and in committees, we are not serving democracy. That is why immunity was built into the system. When witnesses appear before committees, they must have immunity and the laws of Parliament must prevail.
Listen closely to what a senior official from the Department of Foreign Affairs said to Richard Colvin before he testified before the committee. When Mr. Colvin appeared before the committee, the Judge Advocate General had already been asked to consult with his client and submit his interpretation of our claim. We did not get a response, but the witnesses did, and this is what the senior official from the Department of Foreign Affairs said:
“GoC does not share the Clerk's view of the effect of the laws adopted by Parliament—”
We specifically asked the Judge Advocate General for his client's reaction and instead of giving it to us, he intimidates a witness.
He goes on to say:
“—and as a Public Servant [he means Richard Colvin] we trust that you will conduct yourself according to the interpretation of the GoC”.
In other words, if Mr. Colvin is asked to keep quiet, to disclose nothing and to withhold documents, he must comply. To heck with parliamentary law.
“Should there be any concerns expressed by members of the Committee, those concerns should be referred to government counsel”.
That is called depriving a witness of immunity and intimidating a witness because the government is telling him what to do. That is what it is called.
How can we move forward under such conditions? It is very clear that a witness has been intimidated and it is very clear that the government wants to obstruct the committee's deliberations. A witness has been intimidated and his immunity breached.
Before I run out of time, I would like to talk about ministerial accountability. Yesterday, three witnesses appeared before the committee: the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of National Defence and the current Chief Government Whip, who is the former Minister of National Defence. They explained at length that national security is important and so is the Canada Evidence Act.
With regard to the delays in disclosing information, they say that they are not responsible and that public servants are usually in charge of the files. They also blame bilingualism, saying that translating the documents takes time.
In the 16 years that I have been a member of the House, I have always heard the same thing. The best way to delay a committee's work is to say that the documents are not ready. That is a ministerial responsibility. But what have the three ministers and the government been doing? They have been shirking their responsibilities and blaming everyone else.
As for censorship, they say that senior Justice Canada officials—the minister mentioned this earlier—are the ones who determine whether a document could pose a risk to national security. They are the ones who decide whether or not to black out huge parts of a document.
So what about ministerial responsibility? I am sick and tired of hearing ministers say it is not their fault. They are always saying that public servants are the ones responsible, or the Canadian armed forces.
Who in this government is actually responsible for anything? When a person becomes a minister, that person has a job to do. That is what ministerial responsibility means. They have to be responsible and accountable to the people. We will not allow ministers to shirk their primary responsibility, which is to tell the people of Quebec and Canada exactly what is going on. That is important.
We are sick and tired of being told that they are not the ones who intimidated witnesses, that the person who did that was Shawn Barber, a senior Foreign Affairs official. I think the Minister of Foreign Affairs is the one who should take responsibility when one of his officials messes up.
We are also tired of seeing ministers take everything out on their underlings. The ministers are never to blame. They claim not to have seen a particular document because National Defence receives thousands of documents every day.
That is not what I call exercising ministerial responsibility. They are shirking their duty as ministers if they are not professional and transparent and they are not keeping abreast of what is happening in their department. It is not true that a minister who has just faced a barrage of questions goes back to his office, sits down and says that there is no need to worry.
When one has a ministerial responsibility, one calls in one's staff and asks them exactly what is happening. If a minister does not do that, then he or she is shirking that ministerial responsibility. It is the ministers who are to blame for the current crisis. It is certainly not the opposition, which is trying to get to the bottom of things.
The blame lies with the ministers and the Prime Minister. They need to step up to the plate and exercise their ministerial responsibility. That is why we are being forced to introduce a motion in the House to have access to documents.
They are refusing to give the Military Police Complaints Commission and the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan access to documents. Will they go so far as to deny Parliament access to the documents?
I would remind this government that it is in a minority position, not a majority position. That means that there are far more people today who have confidence in the opposition than in the government. If the government does not want to face that sad reality, too bad. We are certainly not going to abandon our role, which is to get to the bottom of things in a situation such as this.
One witness was silenced by a formal legal demand. The minister can go ahead and say that it did not come from him, but from a justice department lawyer. By the same token, the Minister of Foreign Affairs can say that it was a senior official in his department who did a given thing. But the fact remains that, ultimately, the minister is responsible.
To no one's surprise, we are going to support the opposition motion before us today. It will not stop there. I want the government to know that it is in for some problems. It can put up all the barriers it wants, but we will keep on defending democracy.
In the British tradition, we are the grand inquest and the government is the protector of the realm. It can go ahead and protect the realm, but its house of cards is going to come tumbling down. In fact, it has already started to fall.
We will be pleased to support the Liberal motion.
