Bill Graham, then Foreign Affairs minister, inspects troops at Canada's base in Kabul on Sept. 5, 2003.NATACHA PISARENKO/The Associated Press
Former Liberal defence minister Bill Graham is acknowledging an agreement signed under his watch to protect detainees handed to rough Afghan jailers was flawed and should have included better follow-up monitoring for torture.
Mr. Graham's appearance before the Commons committee probing the detainee controversy Wednesday marked the first time a high-ranking member of the former Liberal government agreed to talk to MPs about its role in setting up the problem-plagued handover process.
The ex-defence minister's testimony - which dwelled on late 2005 as Canada shifted into deadly southern Afghanistan - painted a picture of a country thrust into a situation with which it had little previous experience.
Back then, Canada was embarking on the biggest military deployment since Korea and was about to start collecting captives at a rate it had not expected.
"I think it's fair to say the military leadership at the time did not foresee the number of prisoners that were going to be taken," Mr. Graham told MPs.
He said the Liberal government trusted that Afghan authorities would abide by their word to treat detainees in accordance with the third Geneva Convention on prisoners of war.
Canada signed a deal to hand over battlefield captives to the Afghans in December, 2005, even as the Liberal government was preoccupied by an election campaign it would shortly lose. The Harper government inherited this agreement and 15 months later, facing allegations of detainee torture, renegotiated it to give Canada rights to track transferred prisoners.
Mr. Graham's testimony doesn't absolve the Harper government of charges it turned a blind eye to torture for transfers in 2006 and beyond. But it does demonstrate how difficult a task subsequent Canadian governments have faced in handling suspects rounded up while fighting in a foreign nation at war with an insurgency.
"We did our best in the circumstances - in the light of the knowledge we had in the day - and that's the best you can do," Mr. Graham told MPs.
He refused to pronounce on the political debate raging in 2010 - whether Canadian authorities knowingly transferred detainees to torture - saying that's a question that should properly be settled by an "independent judge" in a court.
But he said it's safe to assume detainees have been mistreated given reports that have emerged.
The former Liberal minister said it wasn't evident to his government that prisoners faced a "substantial risk" of torture by Afghan jailers.
"You can't be responsible for what you don't know about. It's not an absolute responsibility."
Mr. Graham said in 2005 Canada felt it was enough to rely on third parties to keep tabs on the health of prisoners - a system that was later proven a failure.
"We had very limited experience with prisoners … and so while we were aware the Afghan prison system was not perfect - in fact was wanting in many respects - we had no reason to believe that they would not be capable of treating prisoners in accordance with the international humanitarian obligations set out in the agreement."
He acknowledged that other NATO allies from the very beginning had arranged to do their own monitoring of transferred prisoners - something absent from Canada's 2005 deal.
"It is true, this agreement lacked a right to follow [up on]prisoners - something contained in other agreements," Mr. Graham said.
"This agreement was criticized for that and with hindsight it could have contained such a provision - which the present government, in its wisdom, added."
Separately, opposition MPs say a deal that would let them view secret Afghan detainee documents is within reach by the end of day Thursday.
In response to a ruling two weeks ago by House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken, the government and opposition originally were given two weeks to reach an agreement by Tuesday that would let MPs view classified records in private. They've been granted an extension until Friday after failing to reach an agreement by Tuesday.
With a report from Bill Curry
Editor's Note: The headline on an earlier version of this online article did not specify clearly that Mr. Graham was referring to a 2005 deal, not a current deal, to protect Afghan detainees. This online version has been corrected.