Thank you very much, Chair, and I thank my honourable colleague for his remarks. They're always interesting.
I want to make an intervention because, as colleagues may have noted, I was on the speakers list on Friday, and I'm sorry, but I had to leave. Members will know that sometimes we are unavoidably obliged to be elsewhere.
I would like to take a moment now to talk about where we are and where we thought we would be able to get to. I ask colleagues to indulge me just a little bit. Again, I'm sorry that I missed the proceedings Friday afternoon. I did try to look at the blues, and I thank the clerk. I had technical trouble accessing them, so I was not able to go through them at length.
It seems to me that the work was continuing, the work that we have been trying to do in the last little while to get to a place where there can be a path forward on the motion that is before us, and with good reason, because, as members know, we do have other business that we need to get to.
Just offhand, members of this committee and other committees are right now having to look at the main estimates, or are deciding how much they will look at them. Those reports have been put forward and are generally allocated to committees, and indeed the supplementary estimates are as well. This is usually a good time for any committee, particularly ours, to look at one of the main functions of an MP, and that is the accountability function and the ability to recommend and to vote as members on behalf of our constituents on spending estimates. I believe there's a due date for that, and I know that it's something that the committee would like to entertain.
I think we've had a number of notices of motions as well, some of them very interesting, in that they bring up many of the challenges that we're having now in dealing with the pandemic. Chair, who would have thought even as little as five years ago, and certainly not 10 or 15 years ago, that the issues of privacy, the issues of access to information and the issues around how citizens are identified by public and private sector entities would become such compelling issues in this day and age, particularly in regard to dealing with a pandemic? I think that a number of colleagues here have already either brought forward notices of motion that would deal with those issues or may be contemplating them, because it is a constantly evolving field that I, for one, am learning a lot about.
When we return to the motion here on hand, one of the last interventions that I made to this committee had to do with looking for that path forward. Indeed, when Mr. Angus first presented the motion and Mr. Fergus was able to bring forward an amendment that just sharpened the focus on that motion, I thought we were in a very good place and that we would be dealing with exactly the issues that Mr. Angus brought up earlier. We would already be in those meetings.
However, then we had the amendment that was brought forward. I have to say that I, for one, still had trouble with the scope, with the timeline, on that amendment that was reintroduced and ultimately passed here. I understand that on Friday there was considerable discussion and that new amendments were proposed that would take into account the problem—which actually came to light, I think, in the last 10 days or so—regarding Speakers' Spotlight. You yourself had mentioned, Chair, that there were constraints around the production of the documents that were outside their control, if you will, constraints that had to do with the legal and regulatory framework around how documents are dealt with. I think that was the spirit of one amendment that was brought forward by my colleague Mr. Fergus around addressing the documents that Speakers' Spotlight would have in their possession going back to 2013, and any other relevant documents, as referenced in their public letter shared on November 10, 2020.
I think members here know the letter that I am referring to. I believe it was made public on Twitter. It had to do with, and I can quote here, “We let Ms. Burke know”—this is from the third or fourth paragraph—“that because all of the speaking engagements took place more than 7 years ago, we did not have hard copies of the files, as these had been purged in the normal course of business. We also let Ms. Burke know that we do have some digital copies of documents that we would produce, along with records of all the speaking engagements dating back to 2008 that were legally required by the Order.”
I understand from the blues that the amendment was voted down and that there was an additional amendment that was recommended by my colleague, Francesco Sorbara, which was more in line.... I guess I don't have to read it out, but just for the sake of clarity, Mr. Sorbara moved that:
we add after section B, section c) that in order to comply with Canadian and Provincial privacy laws, that any request for documents be limited to those documents in the organization’s possession, as well as other relevant documents they may have.
I think that too was voted down, but I think that amendment too was in the spirit of complying with the request while working with the constraints, the limitations, that any business would have in the course of complying with the multitude of legislation and the requirements and good practice that any business must work with.
Chair, I just want to leave that there.
I think that we want to get to that good place. In the spirit of doing so, I appreciate the numerous hours that we have spent debating this, but it was not for naught, in that we did make some good progress and some changes. I think that all colleagues here can appreciate that we're always doing this balancing act.
Contrary to what my colleague Mr. Angus said toward the top of his remarks today, it's not that we're here to help the Commissioner of Ethics and Conflict of Interest to do his job; we're here to make sure that the tools that are available, the framework that anyone holding that office must work with, are in fact more than just adequate and are commensurate with doing the job at hand.
Chair, I'm going to leave that there. I again regret my sudden departure on Friday. I felt like that's the way we do things here in committee, but I'm glad that I've had the opportunity today to speak to what I wanted to share last Friday.
Thank you so much.