Thank you, Chair.
I'm disappointed that we're not dealing with the witness we had scheduled today, but at the same time, this is a really important issue that this committee needs to deal with, so I feel that it's incumbent upon me to participate in the discussion on Mr. Easter's motion.
I have to say that it's unbelievable to me that this has happened. I hear what Mr. Abbott says in his tribute to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration,, and I believe that much of what he said is true. I believe that the minister is one of the hardest-working members of the cabinet; I believe that he puts in incredible hours. I don't agree with a lot of what he does, but I have great respect for the work he does and I have respect too for the kind of partisan edge that there is to a lot of his work.
It's because of that, Chair, that I'm really concerned about what has happened in terms of the revelation of this letter that went out of the minister's office. I believe that if anybody in cabinet or in government today appreciates the distinction between partisan responsibilities and those of government and a cabinet minister, it should be the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, just because he is so directly involved in all of that and because I've been in awe in many ways of the work he has done in that regard. That's why I'm very concerned about what has happened here, about why an official of his office, the director of multicultural affairs in his office, saw fit to use the resources of that office for a very partisan fundraising effort. I think that means that this is a very serious issue.
And given who is involved here directly, I think it is a very serious issue, because if there is anybody I see in government who has exerted political control over their department and over their ministry and who understands those issues, it's the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. When that messes up, I am led to believe that maybe my impression wasn't so good and that there may be a very serious issue here.
That being said, Chair, I despair at this committee's ability to deal with this kind of issue. We will remember our attempt to get to the bottom of the political interference in access to information requests, and our attempt to bring staff people to this committee to testify about their involvement in it, and how that ended in miserable failure; how we had to subpoena staff people to attend because, I suspect, somebody had told them not to come and they chose not to come. The government took the position that they shouldn't testify and that ministers should testify in their place, and we had a circus in this committee. The committee was not able to do its work, was not able to get to the bottom of it, and ultimately the committee decided to put that question right off its agenda without making a report and without drawing conclusions.
It seems to me that this committee is uniquely incapable of dealing with this kind of situation, and I find that tragic. We spent a huge amount of time doing that work in the past on political interference in access to information, and we got nowhere on that file.
Apparently, another committee is doing a report on staff appearing as witnesses before committees, but we've seen nothing of that report and there's been no action on it. I think we were told at the time that this needed to be done before we pursued the issue of political inference in access to information requests, and yet nothing has come back on that, and it has been months.
So I have to say that I'm not convinced that bringing this issue to this committee will result in any reasonable outcome; that we will get to the bottom of anything, even though I believe it's a very serious matter.
Now, what do I do in that circumstance? I'm struggling with my decision on this motion, Chair. I believe it is very serious and that somebody should be looking at it. That may win the day. But I have to say that I despair at this committee's ability to get beyond the games-playing and the partisanship to get to the bottom of a serious issue about how resources of government and Parliament are used for partisan purposes.
So I'm still undecided at this point, Chair, and I'm looking forward to other comments from other members.