Thank you.
I appreciate the evidence that was brought forward by Mr. Green. I think that it's exactly the point of doing this.
We've all given this thought on what our role is here in this committee. We remove the partisan hats, and our role is to get answers that Canadians deserve to have to the questions about transparency and accountability—that's all we want. We just want the facts, and we want the truth to come out and not be hidden, because it behooves us as a committee to gather that.
I've always wondered why.... There is a precedent—Mr. Green called it “a convention”—that allows the belief that the executive branch can withhold whatever information it deems necessary from Parliament itself, from a committee of Parliament, which represents Canadians. I appreciate that.
I certainly don't support Mr. Virani's removal of (d) and (e). Those who redact those documents, Arif, let them make that decision. Let's not make it for them.
We need to ask for full, frank disclosure and accountability of whatever information is there, on everything that the government relied upon to make its decision on invoking this act—on everything. Every possible angle the government looked at needs to be reviewed and redacted as necessary, given the parameters that redactions occur at. As Mr. White said before, then we make the decision. Did we get enough information? Do we have enough to make an informed decision on moving forward? I think that would be reasonable. The whole idea is to ask for the information and see what we get.