Thank you.
Look, we are creatures of our own domain. We do have the ability to pursue whatever studies we want, right? For me, what's most egregious about what happened is that the PM's office quite literally tried to sue the House of Commons to block this information. For me, this isn't just about the Winnipeg labs. This is about a Liberal government that has a culture of obstruction when it comes to our parliamentary privileges, quite frankly. The fact that this had to take a legal proceeding challenging the will of the House of Commons in a minority government is quite problematic.
That's my interest in this. My interest is the overarching theme of the power of the PM's office to keep information from parliamentarians. That is the mandate of this committee, and I think it's well within our parameters to do so. The clown show that Mr. Chong wanted to bring in here I'm not interested in, but I am interested in this. For that reason, I'll be supporting the amendments, and I look forward to hearing....
People can have a lot of opinions about Mr. Rota, but at the end of the day, he did the right thing here, I believe, in defending our parliamentary privileges, because it goes beyond this. If we allow any government in power, regardless of its party affiliation, to get away with that kind of wanton abuse, I would say, we're setting ourselves up for future governments that may be even more reckless. We have to safeguard these institutions and we have to protect our parliamentary privileges to be able to send for people, demand for documents and make sure that evidence is provided here. We just had an entire day of privilege yesterday for people who did not want to co-operate with committee.
That being said, that's my last statement on this. I'll underscore my deep personal disappointment in Michael Chong trying to turn what I think was a very important and salient aspect for this committee to study into a three-ring circus over the March break. I would regret if that were to happen again.
That being said, I will be supporting this motion.
Thank you.