I'm moving toward my conclusion here.
In the 5,000 pages of documents we received, it was really striking that in the pitch to senior officials the Kielburger brothers included photographs of the Prime Minister's family, which I think is very shocking.
What I think is more shocking is that in those 5,000 pages of documents, nobody said that this was problematic. We know that some civil servants noted the fact that the Prime Minister's family—the people who had been paid—were being included in the pitch to get this contract, but at no point did anyone say that this was a serious conflict of interest and that this breached very obvious rules and limitations.
To my Liberal colleagues who are obstructing access to these documents, I put it in a very simple manner. If the statements the Kielburgers made are true in regard to the payments made, those documents will verify them. If the documents verify them, we have nothing else to say and will move on to other issues.
Given that we have felt, however, through our investigation of WE, that we have not received clear answers, we need to be able to verify whether or not these payments were in the manner that they described. Were there other payments? Were these payments involving other matters? We need to know.
We have protections within this committee to make sure that these documents will not just be thrown out to the public, but if there are serious contradictions in testimony, it is incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to find out and get these answers.
The fact that we've already voted to obtain these documents and have already voted to put clear provisions in place to protect the private lives of individuals who may not feel they have done anything wrong but who are very much part of this larger scandal because of their financial connections to the Kielburgers. We need to verify and get these answers.
I know this debate may go on as long as the Liberals want to filibuster and shut us down, but Parliament must be able to return to the Canadian people and say that we did our due diligence, and that we looked into how this massive amount of public money in the middle of the worst economic and financial crisis in memory was going to be hived off and given to a group that has very close personal and financial relations with the Prime Minister's family.
All of us, from all parties, have the obligation to know whether or not the evidence and the claims that have been made at committee are accurate, so that we can in the end provide an accurate report to Parliament.
I'm asking my Liberal colleagues to do the right thing and stop the obstruction they are now carrying on into their second day.