Thank you very much.
I have just couple of reminders for the committee and for some who obviously haven't had a chance to review everything.
Mr. Maloney, you mentioned some comment about the committee.... I want to refresh the committee's memory about the Senate law clerk's evidence that he provided to us early on about our mandate and what it is that we're supposed to be doing.
The law clerk's evidence was:
Accordingly, this committee is master of its own affairs, subject to any direction from the House and the Senate. It can determine what information may or may not be relevant and necessary to the task it has been assigned, and it can determine whether a given line of inquiry is or is not within the scope of its mandate. In other words, the committee is within its rights to determine, on its own, whether any given line of inquiry or piece of information is relevant and necessary to its work.
Additionally, the then House law clerk opined as follows:
While the mandate of the committee does not explicitly include “the circumstances that led to the declaration being issued”, it will be for [the] committee to determine whether and to what extent a consideration of such circumstances would be [given]....
Now, what's interesting is that there was another comment from the Senate law clerk, who said:
...indeed my understanding. Among other things, the role of the committee is precisely to look at whether the exercise of powers that were put into place is consistent with the charter and other instruments.
Additionally, my colleague, Senator Carignan asked a question of Mr. Dufresne. In the senator's interaction with the House law clerk, he said:
We still need to review those powers to determine if they were appropriate or not. If the powers were taken on illegally, that may mean they were exercised inappropriately.
That was Mr. Carignan's question. The House law clerk—Mr. Dufresne at the time—said:
That will definitely be part of how you interpret your mandate. You will be able to ponder [those] questions, that is, try to determine whether the powers were exercised appropriately, the situation in which the powers were taken on and whether it had been anticipated....
Again, I want to go back to the question of section 62. It says: “The exercise of powers and the performance of duties and functions pursuant to a declaration” of the act.
I appreciate your comment, Mr. Maloney, with respect to how you wondered if we should still be sitting after the fact. In an ideal world, this wouldn't have had to be invoked, but when it is, the idea of this committee is to sit contemporaneously, as you said, at the same time as the government is trying to navigate this process. Our very purpose is to ensure the government is following the law, not an interpretation of the law: that they are following exactly what the law says. That is what our role would be if this were still going on and we met at the time.
Additionally, on the performance of “duties” and “functions”, the act is very clear that needed to be charter-compliant. It needed to fit with section 2 of the CSIS Act for national emergencies. There had to be a threat throughout all of Canada.
To me, our role is quite clear: that's exactly what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be looking at whether or not the government acted lawfully and whether or not they were compliant with the charter. That's what the mandate of this committee is, in my opinion. The exercise of “powers” is exactly that: Did the government act within their legislative powers to do what they did?
I appreciate that we might disagree, and that's okay. Again, I appreciate the comments that have gone on. I too don't want to sit here for years to come. I think we can get this done expeditiously. I believe that the Canadian public, who we are here to serve, deserves to know what it is that we are doing and why we're doing it. Obviously, there will be more than one version of a report. I'm confident of that.
I guess the question that needs to be asked is this: How long do we beat our heads against the wall to try to get a report that we can almost all agree to, and when do we say that this particular report does not align with what I believe the Canadian public deserves and you present your own?
That's just something I wanted the new committee members to be aware of. I think we'll be hearing bells here very soon, from what I'm hearing.
I do respect, Mr. Green, your suggestion that there may be some compromises, as we all say, at the very front end. We need to look at what those might be.
If everybody's in agreement, while we vote or whatever that looks like, we could maybe suspend for a little while and see how we might be able to come to some compromise from both sides.