I don't know how I'm supposed to follow that. That was a very enlightening quote Mr. Genuis provided.
Let's get back to what I am proposing. I put up my hand when Mrs. Jansen was speaking. This amendment hadn't been distributed yet, although I thought it had gone out. Fair enough. I don't know if she fully understood—and I'm just interpreting this based on what she was saying—what this is asking for.
I want to very quickly go through it again, now that everybody has it in front of them.
The first part says, “That the committee requests the complete package of documents provided to the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons by relevant Deputy Ministers or the signatories of the transmittal letters, as well as the final package of documents that the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons approved for release”. It's asking for those documents.
Then it goes on to say that “both the documents and packages be provided no later than October 19” and further, “that after the committee reviews the two versions of the documents, the committee invite the relevant deputy ministers, the signatories of the transmittal letters, as well as the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel”—which is to the point that she raised—“of the House of Commons to give testimony regarding the redactions”.
Then it goes on to indicate various dates in there, and that Mr. Poilievre's motion be picked up after that fact.
I am having a very difficult time letting this go. Quite frankly, Mr. Chair, I'd love to hear from Mr. MacGregor or Mr. Ste-Marie as to where they are on this. I know they would not want to put themselves in a position of voting on something that basically deems these officials to have breached privileges of Parliament without even providing them due process.
Because we haven't heard from the NDP and the Bloc, I am really curious to know where they are in terms of supporting it. It's important for people to know that we're basically casting judgment based on some work that was done without asking for information as to how and why the work was done in the way that it was. Although I can appreciate the political need to not support my previous two motions, I think that members should pay a lot more attention to this one, because what we're saying is to give them....
I see that Mr. MacGregor has raised his hand to signal you, Mr. Chair. I know you're on a really small screen there, so hopefully you'll give him the opportunity to chime in at the appropriate moment. Maybe Mr. Ste-Marie wants to as well.
No, he doesn't. Okay.
We're basically saying that these officials, who are independent and work for Parliament, have breached privileges of members. What's worse is that you're not even giving them an opportunity to explain how and why they did their work before you deem that to be the case. If you really have an interest in defending the institution and the individuals, which I know the NDP and the Bloc do, you would want to at least explain, and put on the record, why you don't think they should be afforded the opportunity to defend themselves before casting this judgment on them.
The next part of it is.... It doesn't leave it there. This amendment doesn't just say, “Okay, that's it. That's the end of the story.” The amendment goes on to say that if the committee is still not satisfied, it can take further actions it deems necessary—i.e., for privilege being breached—so there is still the opportunity to go back to Mr. Poilievre's motion and enforce that later on.
It's easy to assume that people out there don't understand the nuances of how this stuff works. Mr. Poilievre brought out documents that had been redacted, and he waved them around. When he did that, he was, of course, trying to imply that they had all been done by the PMO, that the Prime Minister sat there and blacked out all these things, or got his people to black out all these things, before they were turned over to Parliament. Come on. Nobody in this meeting right now thinks otherwise. Everybody knows that this was Mr. Poilievre's intention. Nobody believes that he took the time to explain to people, while he was flashing these documents around, that legal counsel and the officers of Parliament were the ones who blacked out the necessary portions of them. Nobody thinks that anybody took the time to do that.
Therefore, we have to let these people have their say. This is like trying an individual before a court without allowing that individual to put forth their defence. I can't understand how any member of Parliament wouldn't support more openness and accountability—unless of course, going back to what I've been accused of so many times today, the motive has nothing to do with openness and transparency and getting the information out there, but rather has to do with grandstanding and using this opportunity to once again, as Mr. Fragiskatos said, do nothing more than attempt to inflict political damage on the Prime Minister in particular.
We know that from day one, the Conservatives, in opposition since 2015, have spent very, very little time bringing forward policies and motions. I hand it to the NDP, because quite often, although not all the time, when they bring forward opposition motions, they are actually about policy. As we've seen from the Conservatives, every motion they bring forward has always been about how to make the Prime Minister look bad, how to paint him in a bad light. It has always been about personal attacks on the Prime Minister.
I apologize if I'm jumping to the conclusion that motives exist here, but it's all that I've witnessed from the Conservatives for five years. It's the only thing I've had the opportunity to see. There's no interest in policy. There's no interest in bringing forward anything that would advance the agenda of Canadians. They never do that. They just bring forward opposition motions, and take various opportunities during question period, to try to completely annihilate political careers, as opposed to advancing things that Canadians care about right now.
This is germane to the discussion, Mr. Chair. I'm trying to highlight why they're not interested in supporting something like this, or at least why I perceive they're not supporting something like this. I wholeheartedly believe that the NDP and the Bloc are in a different place in terms of worrying about how we are affecting public servants through this process and what a motion like this would be inflicting upon public servants. I think they should be extremely careful when going down this road.
Mr. Chair, I know that Mr. Badawey has something to add to this, so I will conclude my remarks by saying that I have a very, very difficult time letting this go. We're talking about more openness, we're talking about more transparency and we're talking about allowing people to defend themselves against accusations of a breach of privilege. We should be affording them the opportunity to do that.
Maybe Mr. MacGregor or Mr. Ste-Marie see this a little differently and have problems with this particular amendment. Maybe they can find an amendment to the amendment that would make it more palatable in terms of their being able to accept it. However, I really think that at the end of the day, we need to make sure these individuals have the opportunity to have a say in what they're basically being accused of through this motion.
I'm really hoping that, as Mr. Fragiskatos said, in the spirit of collegiality, we can find a way to allow them the opportunity to do that. If you're are genuinely interested in getting to the bottom of this, I think that people will support that idea.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.