Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to support the motion, which I seconded. It states:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should, in accordance with Part I of the Inquiries Act, call a Public Inquiry into the transfer of detainees in Canadian custody to Afghan authorities from 2001 to 2009.
First, I should address the fact that the spread of the dates here obviously coincides with the commencement of Canadian activity in Afghanistan starting in 2001, continuing to this day, the longest military engagement in which Canada has participated. The second world war was shorter than that as was the first world war. We have a long-standing Canadian engagement in military activity and military combat abroad.
There is the importance of Canada doing this kind of activity in a way that complies with our obligations as a country, to ourselves, to the international community and, first and foremost, to our soldiers who are asked to conduct this very dangerous and important activity in the context of our international human rights obligations. However, we need to know whether we put the systems in place to meet these obligations.
I will start with a quote from Brigadier-General Ken Watkin, Judge Advocate General, who appeared before the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan on November 4 of this year. He set out the legal framework of the obligation about which we are concerned. He says, “The prohibition against torture is a peremptory and non-derogable norm of international law”, and here is the nub. He says:
The transfer of detainees to a real risk of torture or ill-treatment is contrary to international humanitarian law, also known as the law of war or the law of armed conflict. It is a specialized body of law that governs the conduct of Canada, its officials, and its military forces during the armed conflict in Afghanistan.
That avoids all the semantics of whether the Geneva Convention applies or whether there were prisoners of war, or any of those diversions we have heard government members engage in from time to time, even claiming in one debate in the House that it was not a war at all. Why the members would do that I do not know. It certainly is a diversion from the reality, as Brigadier-General Watkin pointed out to the Afghanistan committee.
We need an inquiry to find out whether the systems that Canada put in place from day one meet our international legal obligations. The government tries to fog this up in attacks on the patriotism of individual members of Parliament when we question a general. I do not know when this became something that was wholier than thou, that when people criticize a general, they are unpatriotic. This seems to be more the kind of thing we would hear in a more militaristic state than we have in Canada.
We have the right to debate these issues, not that I question any particular statement of a general. However, surely this a country where parliamentarians and the civilian authority is the authority that is important. We honour and respect the work of our soldiers and their sacrifices. We saw a national outpouring during the week of November 11, in which all Canadians recognized that.
However, this is not the point. In establishing this mission in Afghanistan and then carrying out this mission, the primary responsibility of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is to ensure that our international legal obligations are looked after. The senior military authorities in the Department of National Defence and the minister are primarily responsible. The question is this. Is the 2005 agreement, which I think is universally regarded as being inadequate, and our practices now in keeping with our international obligations?
The call for an inquiry is a call for us to find that out in an atmosphere where there is an objective and independent review of the facts and circumstances that were known or should have been known to the government at the time in question. It is not about attacks on individual public servants that are taking place regularly in this House and in the wider public. There needs to be an objective voice and an objective weighing of the issues and concepts.
We are not talking necessarily about evidence. One would not know from listening to the Minister of National Defence that we are talking about a criminal prosecution being undertaken by Richard Colvin. He was doing his job. His job was to report to Canadian authorities on the very things on which he reported. He used the sources that were available to him as part of any normal activity of a Canadian diplomat or political officer in the situation he was in.
Let us not forget that Richard Colvin replaced Canadian diplomat Glynn Berry who, four months previously, was killed by an IED. Mr. Colvin was a brave and courageous Canadian who went to do a job for his country in Afghanistan and is being vilified daily in the House of Commons by the government. That is a shame.
David Mulroney, to his credit, acknowledged the courage, bravery and contribution of Richard Colvin in his work in Kandahar for the Canadian government. As I say, to his credit, Mr. Mulroney's testimony acknowledged that. In fact, he said when the changes were made in 2007, they relied on Mr. Colvin and his work as part of the whole picture of what was going on in Afghanistan.
Mr. Mulroney does not share the view of the Minister of National Defence and others in the government who have done some damage to Mr. Colvin's reputation, but not enough to persuade Canadians that an inquiry is not necessary. In fact, the majority of Canadians, according to a recent poll, support the need for an independent public inquiry into what went on with respect to the handling of detainees.
We hear people from time to time ask why anybody would care, that this is about Afghanistan, a backward country, that all the people are Taliban and they do not have any regard for Canadian lives and why should Canadians care about them. That is part of a theme that runs counter to the call for an inquiry and for Canadians raising concerns and believing that there should be concern.
Since Mr. Colvin was the first one to bring this up in his testimony, I could do no better than to quote the rhetorical question he asked and then answered before the committee on Afghanistan. He asked, “Even if Afghan detainees were being tortured, why should Canadians care?” He gave five compelling reasons. “First, our detainees are not what the intelligence services would call “high-value targets”, such as IED bomb makers, al-Qaeda terrorists or Taliban commanders”.
In other words, the people who were being gathered up were not necessarily as a result of intelligence efforts and choosing individuals to arrest because they were people who were picked up by intelligence sources. They were picked up by conventional forces doing routine military operations. Many of them, as he pointed out, would not have been targets of investigation.
This has been confirmed by later meetings with Afghanistan security officials, who complained that they had to release many of the people who were passed over to them because they did not have any supporting evidence or information as to why they were detained. They were not Taliban. The indication is that the NDS and others have a very high knowledge base of who is and is not Taliban. His conclusion was that a lot of innocent people may have been handed over for severe torture.
He went on to say that the second reason we should care is that seizing people and rendering them for torture is a very serious violation of international and Canadian law. He said that Canada has always been a powerful advocate of international law and human rights, that that is a keystone of who we are as Canadians and what we have always stood for as a people and a nation. He said that to do so would be contrary to our own stated policies. In April 2007 the Prime Minister said publicly that Canadian military officers do not send anybody at all to be tortured. That was indeed our policy, but behind the military's wall of secrecy, in Mr. Colvin's view, that is unfortunately what we were doing. He said that even if all of the Afghans who were detained had been Taliban, it would still have been wrong for them to be tortured.
The Canadian military is a proud and professional organization, thoroughly trained in the rules of war and the correct treatment of prisoners. The question is, at that time, what was the level of knowledge in Afghanistan of government officials and, by implication, the military? Was it sufficient to render a view that there was a real risk of torture or ill treatment if detainees were handed over? That is a question that has to be answered, not by me or by the government here today. We have heard people's views on it. We have heard Mr. Mulroney's view on it. We have heard the generals' views on it. Whether there was evidence of any individual detainee who was handed over by Canada and had been subsequently tortured is not the question, whether there was proof of torture of a particular individual. In fact, the system was such that it was almost impossible to have such proof.
What Mr. Mulroney said to the committee last week was that after signing the second memorandum, and we are talking about May of 2000, a database of detained prisoners was developed. In other words, he confirmed what had been said by Mr. Colvin and others, that prior to then, we were not tracking or monitoring the prisoners, and therefore we could not answer that question ourselves. Whom do we rely on to determine whether or not there was a real risk of torture?
Mr. Colvin, in writing his reports, doing his job and relying on the sources that he was required to rely on, said as follows in an affidavit to the MPCC:
--I obtained information on detainee issues from a wide range of sources. This included diplomats from other embassies, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], officials from UNAMA [United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan], military officers at ISAF, human-rights organizations, journalists--
--and we have seen some of those reports--
--and intelligence sources. It would be normal, appropriate and necessary for me in the context to rely on such sources in the course of my duties. All this information was provided on a confidential basis, and the specific sources cannot be disclosed in an Affidavit.
He said the same thing to the committee and what happened? He was attacked by the government for it. He did not even tell us who his sources were. Of course, the names of the sources are confidential, and that is totally understandable.
Why do we need a public inquiry? Because the organizations to which he referred and the evidence that was laid out, and previous speakers have referred to it, indicated that the United States Department of State, Human Rights Watch, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and other agencies confirm the level of torture and ill treatment in Afghanistan jails was, to quote some, commonplace.
Was there a real risk of torture? That is something that may have to be decided objectively. Did we have procedures in place to prevent that from happening? It is a given that we did not. Obviously the changes that were made indicated that, and some of the things that Mr. Colvin has said were used in doing that.
A Globe and Mail editorial last week talked about four questions, and these are four questions that we believe can only be answered in an objective inquiry.
Here is what the Globe and Mail editorial said:
The federal government's dissembling on abuse Afghan detainees suffered after they left the hands of Canadian Forces is now transparent.
The government must be held to account, and needs to answer these questions: What did the government know, and when?
That is the fundamental question that has not been answered. All we have had is pot shots being taken at opposition members and at diplomats who were doing their job to try and get this information forward.
The article also asked who else inside the government was expressing concern. The government is saying that Mr. Colvin the one person. I frankly do not believe that Mr. Colvin was the only one who expressed any concern about the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan prisons. How do we find that out? We will not find it out by going on fishing expeditions in a parliamentary committee but by having a full public inquiry where someone can do the job.
The article also asked what the extent and the result of the investigation was once undertaken. The article is talking about information before April 2007. Another questions was how widespread was the culture of secrecy. We do know that other countries such as the U.K. and the Netherlands that have been engaged in this activity had open, transparent and comprehensive policies. They had policies which followed up on their detainees and made proper reports.
While all the information was being kept secret, the minister of defence of the day in 2006-07 said there was no problem because the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC, was monitoring the prisoners and the ICRC would tell us if anything was going wrong. That mantra was presented to the House of Commons month after month until finally the International Committee of the Red Cross had enough and made it public that not only did it not monitor prisoners, but it could not do that. It only tells the Afghan government if it sees anything.
I do not even think the Conservative government was able to notify the Red Cross of what prisoners it had because of its poor record keeping and it failed--
