I think we're in agreement on the fact that we want the papers. I am confused as to what that argument was about. We want the papers. I don't think anyone on the committee said that we don't want the papers. We want to exercise our parliamentary privilege. We get that.
I would say, having a Speaker's ruling—and it may be a question that Mr. Dufresne can answer for us, but I'm not even going to get in there.... I think there is an issue in that just because the Speaker of the House says the House has authority doesn't mean that the Supreme Court also said that. He has told us a couple of times that the Supreme Court said that. I've never seen a citation, so I'm not sure what that is.
I'd be happy at some point to see that Speaker Milliken's ruling was upheld in a court of law, because if one branch of government says it can get something.... Well, of course they're going to say they're going to get something, because that's their job.
That said, I don't think we're arguing about that right now. We all agreed that this is an important set of documents. We want to do it carefully. We want to do it judiciously. We want to make sure that there could be some way we could negotiate with PHAC, to find a way that they could exercise their authority and responsibility and we could exercise ours. We're not arguing.
What I am disagreeing with are far-fetched ideas that even hint at some association that makes no sense, that there is something embedded in these documents that's going to solve the world's question about where the coronavirus, COVID-19, came from. I think that's bad rhetoric. I think it's misinformation. I think it's drawing associations that should not be drawn together at a committee of Parliament, and I think it just seeds the oddest ideas in other people's heads.
Let's get out of this. I'm happy with this motion. I think it's going to be pretty hard to figure out exactly where we go with it and how it gets operationalized, but I can live with it. I can live with the motion. Get it done.
There's a certain vilification that's going on here too, that I think is very problematic. I'd just like us to get this motion done, and we'll figure it out.