Let's talk about that, because in 2014 I asked the government, which was then a Conservative government, for notes regarding the political decision to withhold the 10,000 pages of police evidence of the crimes that were committed against children at St. Anne's residential school. I was not looking for those police documents; I don't have a right to them. I was asking for the emails—for the political decision that went into that act—which should have been covered. It was delayed and delayed, and then the Liberals came in and just said, “No, we're not going to let you see them at all.”
Your predecessor took them on. We spent many years on it. In fact, she threatened to take them to court. They agreed, finally, to give me the documents in three batches. I'll bring them in, if you people want to see them. There were three batches of blacked out documents of every email saying “Hey, Mary, how's it going?”—blacked out—or “Hey, Bob!”—blacked out.
It strikes me that the justice department just waits out.... I mean, we fought this battle over seven years. They were threatened with going to Federal Court and they still blacked out the documents to protect the minister. With your order-making powers, could you have changed that decision? Or do they have that power to defy and not turn over documents that should be within the public realm?