Paul Dewar

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am trying to sort out the parliamentary secretary's intervention. He made a lot of points but some got tangled up into themselves.

I want to try to open up the question. He is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Along with what we should do, which is support our troops, it would nice if just once we could hear him say what a great job our diplomats are doing. When they are overseas investigating things, it would be nice if just once he could get up and talk about our diplomats. I think that is something that is lacking.

I want to ask him a question in terms of process. Why is it that when we are asking for an independent inquiry, he seems to think that that will somehow put the government in a corner? It actually will put the truth in front of Canadians. We are asking for the politics to be taken out of it.

Why is it that the government will not agree to an inquiry when that is exactly what every newspaper in this country and a majority of Canadians have asked for? Where is he on this issue? Why will he not ask his government to support our motion?

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with acute interest to the comments of my colleague across the way, the parliamentary secretary. One thing that has been an issue is who does what and who has responsibilities. Earlier I read into the record testimony from the three generals who established it was not their job to monitor; it was the job of Mr. Colvin. When Mr. Colvin comes forward, the Conservatives say that he cannot be trusted. I want to ask the member a question as to why they have done this.

First, Mr. Colvin is told that he cannot really have access to legal counsel. The Conservatives are making it very difficult for him. Second, DFAIT and Department of Justice officials blocked access to the documents which he wrote just days before he was to testify. Third, the day of his testimony he received an email from the government that told him to look out, that when he testified in front of the committee, he had better watch what he said. That is in total contravention from what Mr. Walsh told the committee.

Why is the person who is responsible for doing the job of monitoring and investigating and using the only source he has had available to him, and the generals clearly said that it was not their job, Hillier, Gauthier and Fraser, why are they taking—

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to loop back in my comments to what Mr. Colvin said. As I just read into the records, we have established from committee what the three generals said. They said very clearly that they were not responsible for following up on what was happening in the jails.

We know that at the time Mr. Colvin was raising this issue he was concerned about there being absolutely no process. We had no idea what was happening to those detainees when they were passed over, and the generals supported that when they said that was not their job and that they were not responsible for that.

It leaves us with a question. If the generals are saying that they were not responsible for the monitoring and follow up of the detainees, if Mr. Mulroney is saying that there was no process, and Mr. Colvin is saying that this was his concern and the reason that he wrote the reports, why does the member think the government has decided to go after Mr. Colvin when he was the one doing his job?

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, one of the concerns people have had around the debate and, in particular, at committee has been trying to sort out the different evidence provided by witnesses to committee.

I will just read into the record the question I asked of the three generals at the Afghan committee. I asked, “was there...visits to NDS prison or to Sarposa prison during 2005, 2006 by Canadian officials to follow-up...[on] the detainees...?”

The following answers were provided. General Hillier said, “That was not part of our mandate in the agreement”. Lieutenant-General Gauthier said, “Exactly right and I made reference to that in my comments, that our soldiers weren't trained human rights monitors”. General Fraser said, “That wasn't part of our mandate to go and inspect prisons”.

I just say that to ask my colleague the following questions.

The generals were very clear that they did not have a role in monitoring what was going on in the jails. Mr. Colvin was raising concerns about monitoring what was going on in the jails. Mr. Mulroney said that we were doing no follow up until he came in to try to fix things, leaving a whole 15 to 16 months where detainees were being transferred and there was no monitoring of what was happening in the prison.

Does my colleague from B.C. not think it is about time we find out exactly what was going on in order to sort out the stories? The generals said that it was not their job, and I agree with them. We have Mr. Mulroney who said that it was not his job. We have Mr. Colvin who said that he found out what was going on, that he told people but that no one responded.

Do we not need an inquiry to figure out what is going on?

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things the member has pointed out is the problem we have in this place on access to documents. In some cases there are documents. As the member mentioned, certain people have had access to documents. In fact, in the committee we have had witnesses who have had full access to documents. Yet the committee has been unable to access them. We have had a debate on this side and a debate on the other side in the House. That is what we saw this morning.

We do not have a fair process. We have not had access to documents that the witnesses have had. We have had the government at every step of the way censor documents, tell witnesses that if they speak, there will be consequences. The government has gone to the extent to go after Mr. Colvin two days prior to his testimony before the committee. Through the justice department, he was told that he did not have access to the documents that he would have needed for his presentation.

What does the member think the government is doing right now? On the one hand it tells us not to believe what the other guys say. On the other hand, today we hear it does not even want to have an independent lens on this. Why is the government stonewalling on not only the documents and witnesses, but on the whole idea of having a public inquiry?

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what testimony the minister is referring to, but that has never been the case. In fact, even Mr. Colvin was very clear, as we all have been, that this is not about the men and women on the ground. This is about the people up the chain.

On that, I was taken by the fact that the minister did not refer to the fact that the MPCC was shut down. I will read from a source in the paper yesterday, which says, “Two years ago, the Harper government gave the complaints commission $5 million in special funding to look into the detainee probe, but guess what? They have been kept in the dark. For almost two years, they have not been able to do their work. In fact, not one single document has been provided”, and it is the same problem for our committee. That was written by Greg Weston of the Sun.

Fifty-three per cent of Canadians want an inquiry. The MPCC has been shut down and we have had the committee starved of documents.

My question is very simple. What are the Conservatives hiding? Why are they trying to avoid accountability and transparency? It is not only for their government. This motion goes back to 2001. What are they hiding?

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, one of the facts that was brought up during the committee proceedings was that when General Fraser was asked whether he was aware of the allegations of Governor Khalid, who was the governor of Kandahar with whom we had a lot of dealings, being involved in torture, the general said that he was not aware. Which is fair. That is evidence. Then, the next day, when Mr. Mulroney was in front of the committee, he was asked the very same question and he said, yes, that he was aware of that and that there were concerns.

In fact, we know what happened. We ended up having to have the governor around a bit longer because one of the foreign affairs ministers of the day went to Kandahar and bleated out the concerns that he was going to be removed, and we ended up with him for longer. So, we have those contradictions.

The other one is that all of the generals, when asked whether they were aware that there was abuse in Afghan institutions, said, yes, yes and yes. So, what we have are different emphasis of facts, and contradictions in some cases.

Is it not the best thing to do right now, I ask my colleague, in order to sort out these facts, to have an independent inquiry?

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to detainee transfer, in reply to a question, the government has said that there is absolutely no evidence, that only one person has claimed there were problems.

Mr. Smith, who was the cause for the government to stop transfers of detainees, provided evidence. He wrote extensively in the Globe and Mail. In regard to a detainee he interviewed, he said, as a result of the abuse by the Afghans:

I saw the marks of torture on their flesh. They told me how they had been beaten, choked, frozen, electrocuted, all kinds of these horrible, horrible tortures. And those stories, I have to say, lined up with absolutely everything else that I was hearing in the system. The jailers who held these men complained to me that by the time the Afghan intelligence system was finished with them, that they were often broken husks, you know. Men who stumbled into the jail cells in chains and who couldn't hold their bowels...had to be cleaned up by their jailers. And the jailers were complaining because they said...it wasn't their job to take care of this so-called human garbage.

What does my colleague think of that? Is that evidence to him that there were problems in the system, or is Mr. Smith just another accomplice of the Taliban?

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Toronto Centre for his candour. He laid out his comments that this is not about going after the government; it is about having an independent lens, an inquiry, on what happened going back to 2001. I am glad he made that point because it is worth underlining.

In other words, we are not looking just at the present Minister of National Defence and the previous Minister of National Defence in the Conservative government. We are looking at the file. We are looking at what needs to be established regarding what happened and, as the member underlined, what should be happening.

Are we absolutely certain that everything is currently right? The only way we are going to find that out is if we look at all of the facts.

If we are not able to get a public inquiry going now, does the member believe that we will be able to get enough information from the government for the committee to be able to do what the public inquiry should be doing? In other words, is there any other option than a public inquiry in light of the fact that we have a government that is not willing to dispense all of the documents? Would it not be better to have this independence going back to 2001, as the member said?

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I was about to get up but you did your job. Can we not have a genuine withdrawal here?