Okay, I'm getting somewhere here. I think it was helpful for Mr. Genuis to explain his amendment a bit more fully. He may be surprised, but I don't hate it. I think there's something helpful in it. However, I still think it's premature.
Because we have Mr. Stewart here today, I'd like to engage him a bit on this. We have heard from his lawyer at the Department of Justice, but we haven't been able to engage with the Public Health Agency to see if we can come to some agreement with it about what we could promise to do or undertake to get the information we want.
I am going to be very clear, and this is going to be one of those awful Rob Oliphant moments.
Even though we have many lawyers in the room, lawyers are not always right. Department of Justice lawyers are particularly, in my mind, not always right. They were beaten at the Supreme Court of Canada on the genetic discrimination law, which they fought all the way through, so I have learned to now question our Department of Justice lawyers. This has happened more than once. Department of Justice lawyers advised CSIS with respect to retention of data and information. When I chaired the public safety committee, I was horrified that for 10 years the Department of Justice had advised CSIS with respect to retaining information.
I say that to caution the Public Health Agency of Canada to get a second opinion. It's full of doctors. You need a second opinion, because I think the justice department is not giving you the best advice. I know that is very difficult, and I am on the government side, but I am concerned.
This follows up on what Mr. Bergeron said. We value the public service of the Public Health Agency of Canada. We want to work with you in a way that gets us the information we want and assures you that we will maintain the integrity of that information. Maybe we could do it the way Ms. Zann has suggested with respect to having our lawyer review it first. There may be another option you can come up with that gets us out of this situation without it being as big a deal as it's becoming.
If it gets there, I will support Mr. Genuis in taking it to the House and affirming that. I will absolutely do that. However, I think there has to be some give-and-take in this discussion.
You're here and you have counsel. However, your counsel has drawn a line in the sand that I disagree with. I don't think it stands up to our understanding of not only our constitutional right but also of our responsibility as parliamentarians. We have a responsibility, because ultimately there's a supremacy of Parliament over the other branches of government. Ultimately, that's it.
I'm wondering how we can get ourselves out of this kind of a motion about this and that and find a way to say, “What would it take?” If we can't, I get it. If there's nothing we can do to assuage your concerns about privacy and your integrity as the public service, given the laws that you fall under, I get it. Then we'll go with Mr. Genuis' route and go to the House to see where that leads us.
I'm just trying to find a more constructive way to get us into this and get us out of it so that we have the information we need to fulfill our responsibility and you have the assurance that you aren't breaking laws and that your integrity is intact. We don't want to do otherwise. You're an important agency under a huge stress at this time.
Also, let's be very clear: As parliamentarians, we know that [Technical difficulty—Editor], and I've worked with the Public Health Agency in the past. You don't know this, but I got grants from them. That was in my previous life at the Asthma Society of Canada.
We know you're busy all the time, and you now have a pandemic. You are hugely busy. We don't want to cause more problems. We want to find a solution and do our work. Sometimes with parliamentary procedure, following the rules takes us far down into these motions when we could just stop and try to work this out.
To repeat, if there's nothing we can do to assuage your worry, we'll have to go down the route of reporting to the House, and I will support Mr. Genuis' amendment to the motion.
I don't know how we do this in a procedural way, Mr. Chair, but can we find some way for a non-committee member to talk during a debate on a motion that was moved when we were still questioning the witnesses? That's the awkward part. I think that with unanimous consent we could have Mr. Stewart respond, even though he's not a member of the committee, but that's up to you.