I'll just continue on that quote, to refresh the memory of my honourable colleague:
[J]ust because Del Mastro “drags his political enemies before our committee and drags their dirty laundry out,” doesn't mean the opposition should try to do the same.
“I guess my concern is that Mr. Del Mastro has turned our committee into a kangaroo court, where due process has been blown out time and time again,” Angus said.
“So even though I have real questions about Mr. Del Mastro's activities, I believe he's eligible for due process.”
When we're getting into the salacious details of different activities, I think we lose sight of the fact that, as another member said, “That knife cuts both ways. You can't have it one way when it's your turn and you can't have it another way when it's someone else's turn”. I believe that was Mr. Andrews at the time.
It's indeed the kind of thing that I do not want to see happen in this committee. This committee has a mandate that was given to it by the House.
This has certainly occurred before, and it is referred to in chapter 20 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice
It's also in our Standing Orders, and each committee has those mandates, with reason, because otherwise there would be redundancy, and I don't think we have the time and the resources, nor the desire to see that kind of redundancy between committees.
I think that's really the gist of what I wanted to say here, to remind ourselves as to what our mandate is. It is an important mandate, but we also need to respect the fact that there will be incidents that happen out there, outside this committee, that, yes, bear investigation and should be talked about, and they're publicly aired and so on, but within this committee we need to be respectful of how we speak about people and how we do that here in this committee.
I thank you, Chair, for being patient with me.