Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to hear my colleague from Kings—Hants agree with me that there is such a concept as cabinet confidence.
However, I think it is important to realize, again, as I pointed out in my earlier intervention to his original point of privilege, that cabinet confidence has to be respected in Parliament. What the member is talking about now, though, is information that he needs and his colleagues need in committee to determine whether legislation brought forward by this government is actually not only affordable to the Canadian public but necessary.
I would point out that prior to the decision today, the government provided that information to the opposition. In other words, as I pointed out in my intervention, we provided the information contained within the documents but not the documents themselves.
My question for the member opposition was not whether or not information was or was not provided. It has been clear that information has been provided. My question was whether documents that are considered to be cabinet confidence should have the ability to be protected by confidence, not turned over at the sheer desire of an opposition that may be doing it for strictly partisan purposes.
The question I asked dealt with information versus documents and I did not hear a distinct answer to that question.