Thank you, Chair and colleagues.
As you said, this is unusual. There is some precedent for this situation and I would like to address that.
The parliamentary law clerk, Mr. Walsh, had said at committee hearings in 2010:
the Prime Minister, and any minister, has no authority to prevent someone from appearing in front of a committee.
Their ministerial function may present a limitation on what you can ask that political aide when they're in front of you, but everyone has a duty, apart from members of Parliament, senators, and the Governor General, to show up when summoned before a committee.
I think that context is very important for the situation we're faced with here today, and do expect that the committee at a later time should discuss instructions to have the parliamentary law clerk called to speak to this issue.
We were to meet today by order of the House, a majority of members in the House, the will of Canadians being expressed with respect to the appearance of witnesses and the production of documents. That order gave the government an option. That option was to have the witnesses who the committee requires and that discussion had been initiated at committee and then was continued in the House on Thursday, those witnesses being Mr. Rick Theis, Mr. Amitpal Singh and Mr. Ben Chin at this committee, as well as the production by the PCO of the committed due diligence report, as well as an order with respect to the national defence committee and a witness appearing there.
The government House leader did say in the House and subsequently outside the House that the government would instruct individuals who were asked or ordered to appear not to appear.
The motion, passed by a majority of members in the House and representing the will of Canadians to have those folks appear, did provide an option to the government, which was to have one person appear in place of those witnesses: that is, Prime Minister Trudeau.
Those were the options that the government had, and now we're in a situation where we have public statements from the government spokesperson, the government House leader, that they will defy an order of the House. This is preventing Canadians from getting answers, this is preventing committee from doing its work, and it is clearly a violation—