Jack Harris

[December 3rd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, we know there have been at least 182 visits. What we are asking for is the reports of those visits.

Will the government release the reports of those visits so that we can see the results and how the monitoring is working?

One of the things we do know, and it was revealed today by the Canadian Press, is that on June 2, 2006, at Kandahar airfield, Mr. Richard Colvin, a military lawyer, the RCMP officer in charge of training Afghan police and other diplomatic staff were present and were all advised about potential torture at the hands of Afghan prison officials. A Red Cross representative made a point of raising the issue of treatment of Afghan detainees, including some who had been transferred to the Afghan authorities by Canadian Forces. That was as early as 2006.

We have reports from the committee yesterday that in November 2007 they found evidence of torture in an Afghan prison.

So what was going on during this period? What is going on now? I think people want to know. They are saying that the people who are being picked up are actually attacking Canadian Forces. That is not the case. That is not supported. All of those people are not people who are attacking.

[December 3rd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I rise this evening to follow-up on a question I asked on November 30 of the Minister of Foreign Affairs regarding the number of visits that Canadian officials made to Afghan prisons since the 2007 agreement was made. It was the new and improved agreement with the Afghan government as to the handling of detainees and a supposedly robust monitoring program.

I asked the minister whether or not the government was prepared to release the reports of those visits. We still have the Afghan independent human rights commission and the United States state department saying that torture still remains commonplace in the prisons of Afghanistan. We continue to need confidence that we are not violating international law in this matter. We are asking that the government make those reports public. I think the question was whether it will continue to claim that everything is all right without revealing any facts.

In response, the government responded similarly to the way it has in the past. The government has been obfuscating on this issue. That does not have anything to do with hockey or skating. It has to do with pretending to answer the question but in fact not. It talks about improvements to human rights in Afghanistan. I do not want to hear about that, although I know a lot of effort has been made to try to improve human rights in Afghanistan.

I would like to know whether or not the government is going to release these reports and have the kind of transparency that other countries have in dealing with this issue. Frankly, we are not satisfied that the kind of monitoring that would be expected and needed is in fact taking place. The special committee on Afghanistan has had some witnesses before it, talking about the new system and the improvements that were made.

However, we are learning that, when Canadian officials find that something is going wrong, all they do is tell the authorities in Afghanistan. They do not actually do an investigation of their own. For example, in November 2007, after hearing half a dozen people or so talk about how they were tortured or ill-treated in the prison, describing issues related to being beaten with cables, et cetera, they discovered in the investigator's office of the prison a wire cable that they then reported to the authorities in Afghanistan. This particular investigator was fired as a result.

If that was there in November 2007 and the individuals were complaining about being beaten with wire cables, surely there is some connection between one and the other. When dealing with law, it is called corroboration. Yet, the government maintains that it had no proof of any individual Afghan detainee being tortured. That is not good enough. That is not the issue that has to be answered first of all. The main issue is whether there was a risk of torture and if Canadians passed over Afghan detainees to that real risk of torture.

I do not think the government is answering the question. Information has come out today. The Canadian Press as well as the CBC are reporting issues that confirm Mr. Colvin's concerns that ordinary people, who Canadian generals and military officers describe as local yokels, were being passed over and that the monitoring was not adequate. Will the government release those reports so we can have transparency on this issue?

[Privilege, December 3rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, these documents were to be presented to a committee of the House and therefore become available to parliamentarians. The fact that they were to be tabled to a committee as opposed to the House does not stop them from being kept from parliamentarians. Once they are released to the committee, they are released to all parliamentarians. That is the point.

[Privilege, December 3rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a question of privilege. We have already heard a number of points of order and questions of privilege in recent weeks relating to the government's release or, rather, refusal to release documents.

In yesterday's case, the point of order related to the government's release of its fourth fiscal update to journalists on a plane somewhere over Siberia. This document should have been tabled in Parliament. To add insult to injury, the finance minister then re-released the document in Winnipeg.

The case that I want to raise today is the leaking to journalists of documents requested by parliamentarians, in this case a journalist from the Globe and Mail.

We are all familiar in this House with the case of the Military Police Complaints Commission investigation into detainee abuse in Afghanistan. We are also familiar with the study by the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan into the same matter.

For a number of weeks, that committee and individual members have been attempting to obtain documents. It is important to note that both the committee and individual members of Parliament who do not sit on the committee have made these requests. The requests have been both informal and formal, expressed through motions, written requests, emails, access to information requests, verbal requests, and in fact every which way parliamentarians could think of to obtain the documents.

These documents were not just necessary for the committee's work; they were of direct concern to Parliament and to parliamentarians like me who do not sit on the Afghanistan committee. They were relevant to my work as defence critic and relevant to me as a parliamentarian.

To my surprise and absolute dismay, on reading the Globe and Mail on Sunday, November 25 and on Monday, November 26, I discovered that some of the documents that had been requested by parliamentarians had in fact been leaked to a journalist at that paper. The documents were the subject of two articles on those days.

First, the fact that the documents have been leaked, I believe, is itself a breach of privilege. Mr. Speaker, both you and other speakers have ruled in the past that the leaking of documents requested by Parliament, or the leaking of bills before Parliament has seen them, constitutes a breach of privilege.

I refer to the ruling on March 15, 2001, where the leaking of Bill C-15 to the media did indeed constitute a breach of privilege. There was a similar ruling on October 15, 2001. I would like to read a quote from the member for the then riding of Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, who is now the member for Central Nova and the Minister of National Defence. Interestingly enough, he said at that time:

I share the indignation of the government House leader that this has once again burdened the House with this ongoing saga of information being released in advance of members of the House being given the opportunity of due respect that they deserve....

I think the House leader for the official opposition stated that there is a great deal of irony in the fact that this information deals with secrecy and security, yet the government is still unable with all of its resources and powers of persuasion to prevent this from happening.

Finally, we hope that there will be a strong admonition from the Chair itself expressing the concern and the outrage that the House and the Chamber has for this type of leak because there is a pattern. This is not the first time. We have seen time and time again information being sent out to journalists in advance of this place. Surely the lust of journalists to have this type of juicy information should not outweigh the necessity and indeed the respect that should be held for the Chamber to in the first instance have an opportunity to see, digest and debate this type of legislation.

I think he said the words quite well. This was on the leaking of information to journalists prior to presenting it to parliamentarians. I find this quote particularly interesting and ironic, because it is his department which seems to have now leaked the documents in question to the Globe and Mail.

I would like to refer you, Mr. Speaker, to your ruling on March 19, 2001, when you said:

To deny to members information concerning business that is about to come before the House, while at the same time providing such information to media that will likely be questioning members about that business, is a situation that the Chair cannot condone.

In this case now before you, Mr. Speaker, the subject of documents that were leaked was about to come before the House in the form of an opposition day motion in the House from my party. The motion concerned the need for a public inquiry into the Afghan detainee scandal. The documents in question were relevant and necessary to this debate and they were denied to parliamentarians by the government.

I also refer to your rulings on March 24, 2004, and October 6, 2005, Mr. Speaker, where you found that leaks to the media constituted a breach of privilege. In the first case, the leaks concerned the recording and reporting of private deliberations of a Liberal Ontario caucus meeting. While at first glance this may not seem to relate directly to my case of privilege, I believe a link can be found.

The documents that form the heart of my case were supposedly secret. In fact, they were so secret that they would not be released to parliamentarians. Yet, for some reason, they were not secret enough to prevent the government from leaking them to a friendly journalist.

My main argument on this question of privilege relates to how the leaking of these documents had impugned my reputation and prevented me from doing my job. What lies at the heart of a question of privilege is the issue of preventing parliamentarians from doing their jobs. You have ruled in the past, Mr. Speaker, that the broadcast of incorrect, incomplete or misleading information could impugn a member's reputation, deliver misleading facts to their constituents and therefore prevent them from doing their job. Recently, you ruled twice that ten percenters containing incorrect information that were sent to the constituents of members were breaches of privilege because they delivered misleading messages to those constituents of members.

For a number of weeks, I have been telling my constituents and the constituents of other members that the memos written by Mr. Colvin and other documents related to detainee abuse must be delivered. I have been calling for a public inquiry on the issue. I have stated that the government has been covering up information and hiding details from Canadians. I have told this to my constituents through the media, through my own letters and mailings and by telephone.

When the government leaked some documents to the media and the Globe and Mail, I want to be clear that it leaked selected documents that were heavily redacted or censored. It leaked parts of the information that painted a case against Mr. Colvin and against parliamentarians like myself who would question the government's truth on the issue. These documents were carefully selected.

I am almost finished, Mr. Speaker.

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Human Rights Watch, which is an internationally recognized body, takes an interest in issues of human rights throughout the world. It has also supported the call for an independent inquiry. Does the member think this kind of call affects the international reputation of Canada if we do not have one?

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, clearly, it is whether or not there was a real risk of torture. The member is asking the wrong question and, therefore, he is going to get the wrong answer. That is the problem here. The Conservatives put up the wrong questions and then they answer them. They are never going to get to the truth by doing that.

By the way, I do not wish to trivialize it, but we have a very important public inquiry going on with respect to the salmon industry in B.C. That is going to cost money. This will cost money, yes, but the war in Afghanistan is costing $18 billion, and the expense of a public inquiry is worth Canada's reputation.

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I guess the member will not be surprised by my response. Clearly, if we have an inquiry, we have a dispassionate arbitrator, who is normally a judge, who has a tremendous amount of experience testing evidence, trying facts, sorting facts from opinion, and weighing the evidence.

This is the kind of independence that we would have from a public inquiry. And if there were any documents that were relevant to a particular witness, those documents would be before the inquiry. The parties would have them, the counsel would have them, and they would be able to use those documents to test their memory.

Witnesses do not always remember everything and they do not remember them correctly. Anybody who has been to any kind of inquiry or court proceeding knows that when witnesses are subject to examination, or cross-examination, it does not have to be a nasty cross-examination but probing cross-examination, witnesses remember a lot more things than they might remember off the top of their heads.

So, it is a process whereby the truth can be weighed and be determined. That is why we need an inquiry, not the kind of charade that has happened from time to time in front of this committee.

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, no one on this side of the House has suggested, to my knowledge, that any Canadian Forces member mistreated prisoners. So that is not the issue at all.

I share the member's concern about what goes on in committee and not having access to documents that the witnesses are referring to, without even knowing what they are, how many documents there are, or what is in them. That would never happen in a public inquiry.

A parliamentary committee meeting lasts two hours a week, or an hour and a half at the last meeting I was at, and is a highly-politically charged environment when dealing with this issue. It is impossible to get at the truth. It is impossible to do more than contribute to the back-and-forth banter on a partisan basis about something that Canadians believe ought to be put to a public inquiry.

I would urge the government to do that, if for no other reason than to allow us to go on to other issues that are much more important. What are we doing in the future in Afghanistan? That is pretty important and we have to get to that.

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I was not there when the general spoke to the committee, but I did see a report in which General Hillier specifically said that we may have passed over some innocent people.

I could be wrong. I have not read the transcript, but I have heard him say that he said that. I obviously know that our troops would not deliberately arrest people that they thought were innocent. We do have reports from the Afghanistan authorities saying that they had to release a lot of people who were passed over to them by the Canadians because they did not have enough information to support the detention.

That is what they said. That is not what I said. That is not what General Hillier said. That is what they said. Whether that is right or not, I do not know. I know it is part of the information that is out there that I would hope a public inquiry would deal with.

The ICRC is an independent body. It does not report only to the host country. That is its policy. That was a concern that I raised. The previous minister of defence ended up being embarrassed and had to apologize to this House of Commons for statements he made continuously misleading the House on that point.

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, a member opposite said we have to get to the truth. That is exactly what we have to do. This forum or parliamentary committees should not be the places where people banter back and forth on this subject. We need an objective inquiry.

What would an inquiry do? What would be the value in having an inquiry? It has been suggested recently by a distinguished professor of law that there are five important attributes of a public inquiry: one, independence; two, effectiveness; three, an adequate mandate; four, investigative powers; and five, transparency.

The primary one has to be independence. Regardless of how reasonable I am being here today, and I think I am being extremely reasonable, I am obviously being regarded by members opposite and probably people in other parties as being somewhat less than independent, somewhat biased. That comes with politics. Equally true, of course, is what is being said on the other side by ministers who have a stake in whether or not mistakes were made in the past. They have a bias as well. Independence is extremely important.

As to the effectiveness of an inquiry, an inquiry would be much more capable than a parliamentary committee of doing a proper job, such as examining witnesses.

The investigative powers, and in fact, the transparency and openness of a public inquiry is what Canadians want and what Canadians need.