On Parliament Hill

Our brave Canadian Forces serving in Afghanistan are highly skilled, disciplined and courageous.  They are providing security for our diplomats, aid workers and reconstruction teams who have made substantial progress in restoring infrastructure, training Afghan forces, and improving security for the Afghan people.

However, helping to rebuild a war-torn country after decades of conflict is not easy. The Taliban remain a threat.  And our Canadian Forces are frequently in a position where they are required to capture, detain and hand over Taliban insurgents to the Afghanistan authorities.

Following a recent House of Commons committee appearance by Richard Colvin, there has been a lot of media attention on the issue of detainee transfers.  To be clear, Mr. Colvin did not present any evidence that Canadian soldiers mistreated Taliban prisoners.  Any insinuation that our brave men and women acted dishonourably is an insult to the Canadian Forces.

We have been perfectly clear – when this government has been presented with credible evidence, we take appropriate action. This is why we instituted an enhanced arrangement with Afghanistan over two and half years ago. We replaced the inadequate prisoner transfer arrangement left by the previous government.

Mr. Colvin admitted that he never actually witnessed any acts of abuse. His information is from unnamed second-hand sources and Taliban-prisoners.  These Taliban prisoners are instructed to lie and deceive allied forces.

When directly asked if he (Mr. Colvin) ever raised the issue of prisoner abuse with a Government minister in person, Colvin admitted he did not – despite having ample opportunity to do so.  Further, Mr. Colvin could not even say that the Taliban prisoners that he interviewed were in fact captured by Canadian troops. And it is important not to forget that during this period our troops were engaged in major combat operations – taking the fight to the Taliban enemy – including Operation Medusa where 12 Canadian soldiers lost their lives.

We have been fully transparent about the mission in Afghanistan. We were the first Government to hold a democratic vote in Parliament about the future of the mission – having now done so twice.  This is in stark contrast to the previous government that never held a vote before sending Canadian troops to Afghanistan in 2002.

We have consistently provided information to Parliament through quarterly reports and we have provided thousands of documents to the federal court relating to the issue of transfer of Taliban prisoners. 

Our Canadian Forces are putting their lives in harms way to improve the lives of the Afghan people and face insurgent threats.  It is disappointing once again, the opposition is only too happy to take the word of the Taliban as fact.