No. I appreciate Mr. Oliphant's comments and I understand that there are various ways to go.
We're obviously looking to find out the truth of the matter so that we can determine whether we can do our duty and fulfill our obligation, as Mr. Oliphant pointed out, to make a determination of whether there's a matter of sufficient public interest for this committee to go further.
We're talking about the amendment. With regard to what Mr. Stewart may think of this turn of events, he may think nothing of it and just rely on the legal advice he's been given. I agree with Ms. Zann, by the way, as to what her original motion was, but the amendment that Mr. Genuis has made suggests a somewhat different procedure than what our committee originally decided on in terms of how to handle this matter. As far as giving the documents to the law clerk goes, I think it's the same.
Then there's this significant difference between what Mr. Genuis' amendment proposes and what's in part (b) of our motion.
In our original motion, it says that the law clerk will get the unredacted documents. Then the law clerk and parliamentary council should:
discuss with the committee, in an in camera meeting, information contained therein, which in his opinion, might reasonably be expected to compromise national security or reveal details of an ongoing criminal investigation, other the existence of an investigation, so that the committee may determine which information is placed before committee
In other words, acting on the advice of the parliamentary law clerk, with the knowledge of what's in the documents and what kind of investigation it is, etc., the decision of what's to be made public and what's not is in the hands of the committee.
In the case of Mr. Genuis' amendment, the documents would be deposited with the law clerk no later than two weeks, etc. The law clerk and the parliamentary council shall remove information that could “reasonably be expected to compromise national security, or reveal details of an ongoing criminal investigation other than the existence of...”, etc. Then these documents are to be laid on the table of the House by the Speaker at the next opportunity after they're vetted, I guess, and referred to the committee.
That puts the law clerk in the position of being a judge of what is.... It's his opinion. He decides and take the documents away. That takes away the decision of the committee as to what is relevant or what is being done and puts it in the hands of the clerk.
That may be more acceptable to the committee, and it's up to the committee to accept this approach. I prefer, in fact, the original wording of our committee as a way to go, which is that we have someone who receives the documents initially. They are kept in secret and in private. We receive advice on how to handle them and we govern ourselves accordingly. That's fine with me. That's the proper way to go.
The other procedure is a little bit more bureaucratic in one sense: It turns the law clerk into a judge, which he may not wish to be, in fact. That's a different matter.
I think that's worth knowing. It's the reason that I would ask Mr. Genuis to explain why he chose that method instead of asking the House of Commons to determine that our procedure in fact be followed. That's a point that I wanted to make.
I want to go back to what Mr. Oliphant was saying. I'm not sure we're in a position to negotiate in public with Mr. Stewart as to what would be acceptable to him. It doesn't seem to me that we have all the tools at our disposal to be able to do that tonight at this meeting. I think it would be worth hearing whether or not there has been some decision made in the bowels of the Public Health Agency or the government that this matter is black and white as far as they are concerned. Are they going to go to the wall on this issue, or is there potential for further discussion with the Public Health Agency of Canada as to how to get to the bottom of this?
In essence, we don't know what's going on. We shouldn't be going on a fishing expedition, but we should have some better knowledge of what is in these other documents and what is going on that is being kept from us. With that, we can determine whether it's not a matter that we have any interest in or whether it's a serious matter that deserves further investigation, one that the committee has an obligation to look further into by going the distance and making sure that all of those documents are made available to us.
In the absence of any of that, we really don't have much choice but to proceed further.