I mean quality of movies.
The public interest in the inquiry is that we do it right. There is no absence of action based on what this government has done, what this government and this Prime Minister have said they were going to do. We are following the procedure that was laid out for us all and clearly told to us by the Prime Minister. That's my first point.
My second point on this item is to ask the purpose of having former Prime Minister Mulroney back. Over and over again witnesses were asked whether there was any wrongdoing in this particular study, by any of the witnesses, any of those officials, the government, or anyone involved. Over and over again we heard evidence from a variety of witnesses that they could not identify any wrongdoing. Now, let's be honest. Many of you and some of us, including me, maybe didn't like what was happening and some of the answers, but they could not give us evidence that they were doing anything illegal, unethical, or anything that you could identify as wrong.
I'm not supporting this motion, because to what advantage is it for this committee, when we're doing very good work on the Privacy Act, when we have other issues that are facing us dealing with actual legislation in front of Parliament? I hear lots about access to information. Madam Lavallée and I have chatted before, and I am not opposed to studying the issue. I think there are issues with access to information. But we have only so much time as committee members to deal with these issues. We are doing a very good job, in my view, of reviewing the issues surrounding the Privacy Act at this committee. We've spent a lot of time already--in my view, relatively unproductive time in terms of moving the issues of what's important to Canadians in terms of legislation and the Privacy Act, access to information, and identity theft. There have been a number of issues we could have been dealing with, but we spent time on the Mulroney-Schreiber issue, and we did the study, and it's over.
During that study we could not find any evidence that would implicate further study on this issue.
We have committed to an inquiry. We're going to go to an inquiry when it's ready to be up and running. It may be taking longer than Mr. Martin would appreciate or like, but we need to do it right or it will not have the authority and the substance that are required.
Let's be honest: when we deal with this around this table, we do not have the resources. I believe Mr. Martin mentioned in his opening statement that an inquiry would be better resourced than the committee would be. I absolutely agree with him that an inquiry has that ability. You can have staff involved in research in a technical way that is not readily available to us as members of Parliament. You can have a very professional inquiry based on the experience and knowledge of legal staff. I myself am not a lawyer. An inquiry would allow for that, and for what I would view as a much more professional approach.
The approach that we had taken around this table during those long months of that inquiry did not produce any evidence of wrongdoing. Our parliamentary secretary, Mr. Hiebert, asked that question consistently of every single witness. Why did he? It was to have it officially on the record in the report that we were not able to find any wrongdoing.
Mr. Hiebert had other questions, but of course he wanted to make sure we all understood that, to be consistent and to be fair to all witnesses that were in front of us, those were the types of questions.... And those were the answers that the public--if you want to talk about public interest--really wanted. Was there any wrongdoing? Was there any evidence of wrongdoing? Were you able to discover any wrongdoing?
Over and over again, week after week, Mr. Hiebert asked the questions, and others asked the questions, and based on the testimony that we heard from folks and on the code of conduct, there was no evidence of it.
So having Mr. Mulroney come back to say I'm not sure what, and why that would be of importance.... That piece of evidence was there.
We could inquire further, but I want to say a couple of other things before I talk about Mr. Mulroney's testimony in front of the committee.
I think it's a dangerous precedent—and I think Mr. Martin alluded to that in his opening statement—to be calling and recalling former prime ministers of Canada to standing committees of the House of Commons.
The Liberals have more former prime ministers available to be called and recalled on a variety of issues. I believe Prime Minister Chrétien and Prime Minister Martin are still available to us if we really want to see them on a number of issues.