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.
