Mr. Chairman, this whole inquiry or process started off as whether or not there was political interference. It is quite clear there hasn't been.
The types of questions I'm interested in are on the issues of why there was delay and how we can improve that. There has already been some evidence that has dealt with that.
I'm still not clear on the process of blacking things out. They say there are guidelines, but I'm still not clear. I'd like some more clarification on how much discretion is given to officials to do that sort of thing. Someone said the guidelines are thick. I don't know if I want to go through all those or not, but I'm interested in that process. Do we just let some bureaucrat decide that it's going to be blacked out, or what is the process? Should they have discretion? Should they not have discretion? These are all useful questions.
There was an admission by someone—I can't remember which witness it was from the government—who said the guidelines haven't been updated for a while and we need to have a process for updating them. I don't know if that was for guidelines or recommendations. How do we approve that process? How do we review the guidelines?
All of these witnesses can add to that in some little way, even the officials who the deputy doesn't want to come here. I believe they can make a contribution and make suggestions to the committee.
The only area I talked about was whether it goes on and on or whether you divide them into blocks. I don't know how many times we've seen senior officials say “I'll answer the question”. You direct it toward one witness and they say....
Whatever we do, I'd like to see the deputy separately from the others. I'm not saying he'd do that, but I don't want him saying “I'll answer those questions” and then someone gets into a brouhaha and says “No, I want that witness to answer these questions”. That would be my recommendation, whether you'd put them all on one morning and you'd have the deputy and then you'd recess for a couple of seconds and then you'd have a different block....
I think you are getting some sort of consensus here, Mr. Chairman. It varies slightly from speaker to speaker, but there is a consensus, I believe, that we want to see these people. The question is how we see them.