There's no problem at all, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to be very clear. I think some very good points were raised, but I'd like to respond, particularly to what Mr. Warkentin said. I'm glad Mr. Warkentin followed the news over the summer and read the national news on this. I would also hope and assume that he followed the debate that we had at the ethics committee. We had a long discussion about this. It wasn't the will of just one party. It was the will of the majority of the members of the committee to put a framework around the in camera aspect of this.
This was done for extraordinary reasons. Why? The debate really centred around the notion of who investigates the investigators. In other words, who gets to do it? Should MPs be investigating other MPs and their families, and by extension their friends and all that kind of stuff? The answer was no, we have an Ethics Commissioner who does that. If members feel that the Ethics Commissioner doesn't have full access, then that's the reason we approved this motion. We said, “All right, the original idea was that all this information was going to go to the Ethics Commissioner, just as a clearing house through the clerk; therefore, we're not really investigating each other.” There was some concern that members wanted to see this information, so then we put some limits around that.
This was the will of the committee, not the will of one party. The idea was, with this information.... We developed this on July 22, not very long ago, under the same conditions in which we find ourselves now in terms of having a hybrid Parliament. It's in the sense that, with COVID, which was happening, we said, “All right. We're going to leave this to make sure that members can take a look at this, but it will be kept at the clerk's office. We're going to try to limit the number of people on this so that we don't put anyone, our staffers or anyone whom we designate, in a compromised position in case the information ends up being released.” That is the reason that we put those conditions in place. It was the will of the committee to do that.
It was, I think, the best thing to do under the circumstances. Nothing else has changed. There's no other material factor that has changed in terms of the ability of members to get to Ottawa.
I know we all have different weeks of House duties. We were talking about this off camera before this meeting started, about all of us being required to come to Ottawa from time to time to do our duty in the House; otherwise, we would be participating online. Well, I think that, as part of that duty, that's exactly what will happen.
You're not getting any opposition from me or from my colleagues in the Liberal Party to bringing forward this information. We're saying, “Fine, but bring it forward under the same conditions that we established back in July.” Given that nothing has changed in our circumstances, that should still apply.
I've known Chris for a long time. I'd like to consider him a friend, but I didn't appreciate the tone in which he suggested that this was a partisan issue. It wasn't. I think this committee has done very well in making sure that we want to support the work that's being done.
We all know that there are discussions going on about how we can take this off the ethics committee's plate and put it onto a special committee's plate so that we can go on and do the important work we set out to do back in February, which we know is time-limited.
Mr. Barrett, I think we would come to a quick agreement if you were to bring forward the same conditions that we adopted so that members of the committee can examine those documents. Bring forward those same conditions that we had back on July 22, and we're done; we can move on to other issues. We know that the same material will be brought forward and the same conditions in which they would be applied would be brought forward, and we would be able to discharge our duties as members of this committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.