Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to join in the debate on the opposition day motion, calling for papers and documents to be presented in an uncensored form to the House.
However, before I talk about that, I want to emphasize what this whole issue is about. It is about Canada meeting its obligations under international humanitarian law.
I want to quote Brigadier-General Ken Watkins, who appeared before the Afghanistan committee several weeks ago. He was the one who laid out that transferring prisoners to a situation where there was a real risk of torture or abuse was contrary to international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict. That is precisely the situation we are concerned about along with what Canada did in the period after it started taking prisoners.
I should have said, Madam Speaker, that I am sharing my time with the member for Ottawa Centre. Therefore, I will only have the first half of the 20-minute period.
The important point is the inquiry by the House of Commons committee on Afghanistan is in furtherance of trying to find out what the government did in order to meet its obligations.
What have we heard from the government? We have heard a defence based on, regardless of what happened, the fact that there is no proof any particular prisoner passed over by the Canadian Forces was subject to torture or abuse. This has been said many times.
On four occasions, on November 23, the Minister of Defence stated, “There has never been a single proven allegation of abuse” involving a prisoner transferred by the Canadian Forces.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said, on December 1, “Let me be perfectly clear. There has never been a proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian Forces”.
On December 4, the Minister of Transport said, “There has not been a single proven allegation of abuse of a Canadian-transferred prisoner”.
We know that is not true. We know that is patently false. The government has been providing false information to the House.
What are we to do about it? Our party has called for a public inquiry based on the revelations of our diplomat, Richard Colvin, who, starting in May 2006, was writing memos and letters, six of them in 2006 alone, referring to the problems and passing them out. We have not seen those memorandums yet.
In fact, we have seen one, and this is an indication of why there is a need for uncensored documents, dated December 4, 2006. The subject line is “Afghanistan: Detainee issues”. It refers to earlier memoranda of July 25, 2006, October 6, 2006, and November 24, 2006. This was given to the committee with nothing on it. It was blacked out for pages and pages on end. Three pages of the entire text of that memorandum were blacked out, with nothing being disclosed to the committee. The reply directed to an ambassador was also entirely censored, although “redacted” seems to be the favoured word. The committee and the public were deprived of knowing what in fact Mr. Colvin was saying and talking about under the heading “Afghanistan: Detainee issues”.
We need to know. If there is nothing to hide, then the committee can find a way, as has been suggested, at looking at these documents, whether it be in an in camera meeting or whether a privy councillor opportunity or option is chosen, whatever way is needed, to ensure issues of national security are protected. The fact is this information needs to be made public and known.
Yesterday General Natynczyk confirmed what had been reported in the press, that, yes, Canadian detainees passed over were abused. The Canadian Forces took them back. Another individual they did not pass over because the interpreter overheard the Afghan police talking about killing the individual.
This confirms the concerns of Mr. Colvin and others about extrajudicial killings. This confirms the notion that the soldiers knew, in the summer of 2006, that there was a real risk of prisoner abuse or torture. In fact, they not only knew but they took pictures. They were taking pictures before they passed them over because they were concerned they might be abused, as had happened before.
That knowledge was live, on the ground and in the field in Afghanistan at that time, yet the government continued to order prisoners to be passed over to the Afghan authorities. That is the problem and we need to get to the bottom of it. The government does not want to have a public inquiry, which the House called for on December 1 when it voted on our opposition day motion. The motion was supported by the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals.
The government still refused to have a public inquiry and it refused our requests when the full extent of the lack of forthrightness by the Minister of National Defence and his misleading of the House on this issue came forward. Our request for him to resign and our insistence that he take responsibility as minister for misleading the House have both been refused.
We still have the committee at work and we do have the supremacy of Parliament, but we cannot have a situation such as the Minister of Justice suggests. Some individuals, using their discretion, are saying that members of Parliament cannot find out about what is going on. That is their position, but that is the wrong position. This has been very clear in the documents and the authorities. The claims of Crown privilege do not diminish or derogate from the power of a House to require attendance, testimony and production of documents.
A very comprehensive study was published called “The Power of Parliamentary Houses to Send for Persons, Papers & Records” by the member for Scarborough—Rouge River, an MP, lawyer and member of the House. He compiled all the authorities that related to the ability of a House and committees to get documents. There are provisions for a request by the government for committees not to take the parliamentary power to the extent.
Maingot writes:
With respect to federal public servants who are witnesses before committee... the theory of the compellability of a witness to answer questions generally may come in conflict with the principle of ministerial responsibility.
By convention, a parliamentary committee will respect Crown privilege when invoked, at least in relation to matters of national and public security.
In the final analysis, witnesses must rely on the collective common sense of the members of the committee and their good graces.
The Crown has the right to claim privileges, but the supremacy of Parliament is incontestable. While they may claim it, the power of Parliament is predominant and overrides that. This is a perfect example of where that needs to be the case. We have a Parliament where the majority of the members of Parliament sit in opposition to the government. The government is seeking to use means to prevent Parliament from exercising its power of being supreme through its committee.
This is an example of an important constitutional matter, the supremacy of Parliament over the executive. There may need to be means to ensure that something that should genuinely not be disclosed to the public is not, but being disclosed to the public and being disclosed to members of Parliament are two different things. I think members of Parliament understand and know that.
We support the motion. We think it is time that Parliament ensured its privileges are respected and that members of Parliament can be counted on to do their job and act in the public interest.
