Yes, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Reid has clarified what he believes is the more appropriate order to follow with respect to this investigation. The report says, of course, that Mr. Esau, Professor Attaran, and Ms. Jocelyne Sabourin should appear. He has suggested that the order should be changed.
You have to remember what this is all about. This is about the allegations that really came from an article Mr. Koring wrote in The Globe and Mail, in which he alleged that the government denied the existence of this report. That's how all this happened. That's why we're debating all of this today. It's because of that allegation.
Mr. Reid has quite appropriately put forward the Information Commissioner first, ahead of Mr. Esau and Mr. Koring and the professor, in order to discuss or to explain the processes. I'm not going to go into that, though, because I've already made that submission to you.
In his second point, Mr. Reid then talks about having Mr. Esau and Mr. Koring come. Mr. Koring refers to Mr. Esau in one of his articles—and he wrote several of them. But the main point we have here, as I've said, is in an article that Mr. Koring wrote on April 25, in The Globe and Mail. To quote from his column, Mr. Chairman, it stated:Initially, [the government] denied the existence of the report, responding in writing that “no such report on human-rights performance in other countries exists.” After complaints to the Access to Information Commissioner, it released a heavily edited version this week.
That one paragraph tells me that the first person we should see is the Information Commissioner, because that's where all this started, with the allegation that “After complaints to the Access to Information Commissioner, it released...”. That's according to Mr. Koring, at least, but I don't know whether this is true. That's what he says, so we'll have to ask him about it. That's the reason Mr. Reid put the Information Commissioner forward as the first individual.
The second individual is Mr. Esau, because I gather he made an application. He'll tell us whenever he comes to speak to us.
More importantly, one of the first witnesses who should appear before us, after the Information Commissioner—which this amendment addresses—is Mr. Koring. Do you know why? It's because of this article that he wrote in The Globe and Mail.