OTTAWA - A special House of Commons committee will conduct a wide-ranging investigation into the handling of Afghan prisoners -- including whether senior officials knew about the risk of torture in Kandahar jails and whether there was an attempted coverup.
The Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois teamed up Wednesday behind closed doors to launch the probe, which will see key witnesses called to testify.
Those witnesses are expected to include cabinet ministers, senior federal officials, military commanders, former defence chief general Rick Hillier and Richard Colvin, the Canadian diplomat who warned of possible torture.
The Opposition parties vowed to get to the bottom of the controversy and warned the government against trying to throw up roadblocks, such as the blanket use of national-security clauses.
"We can subpoena (witnesses) and if the government wants to quiet them down ... and tell them to shut up, then we're going to fight. We're going to have a good fight with the government," said Bloc defence critic Claude Bachand.
Last week, Tory MPs raised objections to opposition demands for the inquiry, arguing that the special committee on Afghanistan should be looking at secrecy laws that have stymied other investigations.
Following Wednesday's meeting, Tory MP Laurie Hawn, the parliamentary secretary to the defence minister, insisted the government was committed to uncovering the truth and said the committee was well within its bounds to open an investigation.
"The committee will proceed that way and that's fine," Hawn said. "That's the way this place works."
Hearings could begin as early as next week, but how many of them will be held in public remains to be seen.
Parliament's law clerk, in a letter to Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh said that national-security provisions "may warrant receiving some testimony at in camera meetings."
But Bachand said the government will be forced to explain why that is necessary.
New Democrats and Liberals are drawing up lists of witnesses, and that will be considered Thursday.
The committee passed two motions, one of them sponsored by the NDP empowering MPs to look into the torture allegations.
Dosanjh emphasized the investigation will not be a witch hunt aimed at Canadian soldiers, whom he said are faced with a daunting task of fighting a war against a shadowy enemy.
"It's not about Canadian Forces and it's not about Canadian Forces torturing anyone," he said.
"It is about some people in authority, not paying attention, not doing their job and transferring detainees through Canadian Forces and actually putting our Canadian Forces at risk of having breached the Geneva Conventions."
Knowingly handing over prisoners to torture is a violation of international law.
The Bloc MPs also pushed through a demand to examine the government's use of secrecy laws.
Each of the Opposition parties are eager to hear from Colvin, who issued stark torture warnings in 2006 more than a year before the Conservative government acknowledged the problem.
Even though two of his reports were circulated widely within the defence and foreign affairs departments, federal cabinet ministers and former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier claim not to have seen them.
A series of stories by The Canadian Press has laid out how the government has attempted to block his testimony.
Colvin has been called as a witness before the Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry, but federal lawyers have invoked a national-security clause that prevents him from saying most of what he knows.
At one point they tried to have him stricken from the witness list.
That inquiry is stalled as lawyers argue over the extent of the commission's authority.
The national security clause -- Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act -- has caused a stir within the legal community and angered some opposition politicians,who say it's being used to cover up political misdeeds and not legitimate secrets.
