All right. That's the first thing.
In terms of being a public document, when a document is no longer secret, it doesn't mean that it's then posted on a website or made readily available in that way. Having been a researcher in a former life, and I actually employ a researcher as well right now, when we hear about documents that are public and are of interest, we regularly make an effort to pursue them. That doesn't happen immediately. We have to go through all the same channels as everybody else. We do not necessarily immediately find these things coming to us.
On the assumption that we've all had the document and therefore we're all thoroughly apprised and can ask fulsome questions of the witnesses, in saying this, I think Mr. Martin is labouring under a misapprehension. I just want to draw that to the attention of all members, including Mr. Martin, so they'd be aware that while I'm sure it was meant sincerely, it's actually factually incorrect.
The second item does relate to the idea that the report, which is going to come in, will then release the testimony we've heard here. If I understand this correctly, I think there's a bit of a problem with this. Although Mr. Van Kesteren ran the idea by me before he introduced it, now that I'm thinking about it, there may be a problem here.
The purpose, I think, of having the redacted, translated version of the document is, I assume primarily--maybe there are other reasons--to allow us to engage in fulsome questioning of the witnesses so we can look down and see what's being discussed and what's in the report. That can't happen because the report is happening tomorrow and the witnesses are here today. So we actually got things backwards. We would make the information public in, more or less, 24 hours from now, but it wouldn't actually assist us in that particular task. I might be wrong. There might be another reason for doing this.
The only other reason I could think of--and this is my third point, Mr. Chair--was that if we receive the documents tomorrow in both official languages, they become available to us then. In terms of the general public, our friends in the media and so on, is there anything that prohibits any of us at that point, if we contact the clerk, from taking the documents and using them in a forum outside of the confines of this committee in order to give context to our comments and remarks and responses that inevitably we'd presumably be asked to make with regard to the substance of what the witnesses had said, which would become public at the same time? Would we actually have access to those for that purpose?
That's a question, but I think it's relevant to the motion.