Information & Ethics committee  Both of those requests came to my division as the office of primary interest, so it was my division that responded to the request from the access to information office. Now, because the second request made no reference to Afghanistan, I think they may have been assigned to different case officers within the ATIP office.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, Mr. Chairman, parts of the released text use the word “torture”.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, sir, he clarified what he wanted. In fact, he submitted a request on the Afghan report prior to his submission of a request for a global report. If you look at your chronologies for the two requests put forward by Mr. Esau, the 604 request was for the specific Afghan report.

Information & Ethics committee  If I could refer to the application of subsection 15(1), the reports are viewed according to the act. In the interpretation of subsection 15(1), we look to see whether the release of information could reasonably be expected to be injurious to the conduct of international relations.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Martin, I'm not able to speak to specific redactions made in the 2006 report—

Information & Ethics committee  —or to what was taken out of the other reports. I can speak to you about the rationale for redactions, and I would be very pleased to do so.

Information & Ethics committee  In any sentence, the reviewer would look at the information and determine whether its release would be injurious to the conduct of international affairs. Now whatever the language is, whatever the text is in the document, the reviewer would look to see whether the release of that information could bring risk to the source or whether the release could cause a source to no longer be willing to provide information to diplomats abroad.

Information & Ethics committee  I would need to reread those reports to see whether the word “torture” appears.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Martin. I really do appreciate this opportunity to clarify this point. I think it is important that the committee have a clear understanding of how this was processed. When I received the request about whether there was a 2005-06 or a semi-annual or an annual report on human rights performance in countries around the world, this sounded to me like a request from someone who was very familiar with the kind of reporting that is done on human rights situations around the world.

Information & Ethics committee  So that confirmed my original understanding.

Information & Ethics committee  There was no difference in that injury test.

Information & Ethics committee  I authorized the recommendations under subsection 15(1), yes.

Information & Ethics committee  If I could clarify, Mr. Dhaliwal, my division is responsible for coordinating the process, the global process, for the annual human rights report.

Information & Ethics committee  Certainly. Every year my division issues a call to posts around the world that we believe should send a human rights report back to the department. The list of the countries from which we are requesting reports is determined through a consultation process with the geographic areas of the department and with the posts themselves.

Information & Ethics committee  I am aware that we have reports on the human rights situation in Afghanistan.