One lawful excuse, of course, would be that you're upholding centuries-old traditions by not attending and supplanting ministerial responsibility. That, of course, would be the lawful reason for the non-attendance of the witnesses in question.
While I was disappointed that you didn't elaborate on the longevity of the principle of ministerial accountability, I will bring us to modern day and clarify the words of Judge Gomery on page 139. He didn't refer to ministerial responsibility in a vague sense that could be widely interpreted however one chose. He was very specific. In fact, his words on that page are incredibly apropos.
First of all, he doesn't just use the term “accountable” and he doesn't just use the term “responsible”—terms that could be widely interpreted by fair-minded people. He also uses the term “answerable”. And the attendance of a potential witness before committee falls under the rubric of answerability.
He then also uses the term “exempt staff”. He was not speaking in a vague sense requiring broad interpretation by the government. His words are very explicit—highly applicable to this situation.
Then he uses the term “all”, as in ministers need to understand that they are clearly answerable for “all the actions” of their exempt staff.
That would seem to run at cross-currents with your interpretation that ministers are only responsible for some of the actions of the exempt staff and that the exempt staff, by consequence, are responsible for others.
The term “all”, the term “exempt staff”, and the term “answerable” make this sentence tailor-made for the circumstances with which our committee is now presented.
That is the basis on which the government has made the decision to instruct ministers to attend in the place of staff members who've been wrongly called. It now falls to the committee to accept that ancient tradition of ministerial accountability and proceed with questioning of the ministers in question.
That decision has now been made. I think it would be in the interest of the taxpayer that we move from this procedural debate, which is resolved, to a practical study of the matter of access to information and the way in which it is applied so that on the government side we can explain the actions that we've taken, and on the opposition side the members can carry out their legitimate function of critiquing our approach.
So that is the decision the government has made, and those are the principles upon which that decision rests. We feel very confident that the hundreds of years of traditions behind it support the decision and our actions.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.