Thank you, Chair.
I concur that a message needs to be sent from the committee. It isn't about the details or the issue itself, it's about structure and function in governance and committees' roles and the people who serve the public.
Having said that, if you look at the debate we had last meeting, when we were discussing having the Minister of Justice here, we had a compromised motion in the end, which I think Mr. Stanton was behind and helping out with, and we all were kind of growing together, if you will. I think we should do the same on this issue.
It's really important. I had questions about the security preparation of documents. If we don't have the public servants here to be able to answer that question, then the issue we're looking at, be it this specific case or the wider issue of access to information, is lost. I'm understanding that the originator of the document is the person who is responsible for classification. I wanted to be able to ask that question, to find out from the deputy minister or someone who is involved with that what exactly happened here. Who was the originator of the document?
I know that's what we're trying to get at with Gwyn Kutz coming. If we're looking at a document that was classified in a certain manner or was changed and we don't know and we're not able to shine some light on that, it's very difficult, as I mentioned at our last meeting, to be able to propose amendments to an ATI or to improve ATI, and it's certainly impossible to shine light on this case.
Finally, I want to say that as a committee we've talked about the government needing to bring forward its ATI plan. I'm not casting aspersions here, but when we're asking to find out more and we have empty chairs, that's really frustrating. It's perhaps a metaphor for what's happening on ATI with the government.
Hopefully, we'll be able to get the will of the committee to do whatever it takes to have people here to move forward, because we're moving sideways and backwards. If we can move a strongly worded motion to get people in front of this committee so we can shine some light on this case, I'd be in favour of that.