Thank you very much, Mr. Chair; and thank you to any staff involved with the comparison.
One of the things that's really important is that the transmittal letters in particular are included in the package of documents that will find its way for consideration by the committee.
You'll recall the original motion back in July that, again, gained support from both sides of the aisle, which said:
That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a), the Committee order that any contracts concluded with We Charity and Me to We, all briefing notes, memos and emails...from senior officials prepared for or sent to any Minister regarding the design and creation of the Canada Student Service Grant, as well as any written correspondence and records of other correspondence with We Charity and Me to We from March 2020 be provided to the Committee no later than August 8, 2020;
This next part is key to the importance of the transmittal letters, and forgive my taking a bit of time to get there, but this piece is important:
that matters of Cabinet confidence and national security be excluded from the request;
Before I read the rest of the motion, I think it's important for it to sink in that the government was not requested to give documents that touched on cabinet confidence or that compromised national security.
It went on to say:
and that any redactions necessary, including to protect the privacy of Canadian citizens and permanent residents whose names and personal information may be included in the documents, as well as public servants who have been providing assistance on this matter, be made by the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons.
I argued earlier in this meeting that it doesn't relieve the non-partisan public service of their obligations to comply. In any event, I'll set that argument aside for now.
The point here is that, for items that are not relevant to the committee or motion request for documents that were redacted by the professional public service, those redactions took place for good reasons. They may have involved items that were on the agenda of a cabinet meeting, the cabinet meetings in fact, perhaps, that the Prime Minister and his chief of staff testified to at the finance committee in the previous session; matters of national security and sensitive procurement that could hurt the government's ability to act in the national interest; or matters that, if released, could be damaging to Canada, which is frankly what we're trying to avoid the disclosure of under ordinary circumstances.
I am always in favour of protecting our national reputation and our national security before anything else and allowing government to make decisions knowing that they can have, in certain circumstances, confidential conversations.
In my view, the redactions that I've seen strike the right balance between releasing relevant information as the committee has requested and protecting cabinet confidence, which, again, this committee did expect would be respected.
In the Privy Council Office document release that the clerk circulated today, there is a synopsis of a cabinet meeting. Frankly, it's an extraordinary document, when you think of it, that would rarely be released. I don't think previous governments would have allowed that type of document disclosure of things that should be subject to cabinet confidence. The synopsis here of an entire cabinet meeting has been made public, though there are obviously items that are protected by cabinet confidence.
Items that related to the Canada student service grant were still disclosed. I don't know what other topics were discussed. There could be national security issues—we'll never know—and cabinet confidences that are not related to any of this ought to be protected for good public policy.
This was determined by the Clerk of the Privy Council, in reference to my point, in his transmittal letter specifically. These transmittal letters give context to the documents to explain precisely why certain things were redacted or not redacted.
Frankly, there are reasons that documents such as this are not normally public until long after a government's mandate has come to an end. Ensuring the confidence of cabinet deliberations is essential to peace, order and good government, which our colleagues often reflect upon publicly in their comments.
These confidences are essential to the operation of responsible government, yet in a rather extraordinary move the Clerk waived privilege on sections of this particular document as they related to cabinet discussion on the Canada student service grant. These confidences are amongst our country's most protected information. Here it is for everybody to read.
If opposition colleagues want to view documents that are subject to cabinet confidence, they should form government and be appointed to cabinet and they will have their access to cabinet confidences there, and frankly, I would defend their right to have those confidences, even in opposition.
Until then, Mr. Chair, the release of this relevant cabinet information as it relates to the Canada student service grant is going to have to suffice.
Through the PCO release, once again, what do we actually find redacted? It's a personal phone number of a staff member, an item that never would have been released in an access to information request. I think that kind of protection is important and necessary.
To conclude the point in support of the subamendment, the transmittal letters we now know were not included amongst a few other documents that were just referred to, and are not actually captured by the motion. It's difficult to imagine how we can determine the appropriateness of disclosures made by the government when we simply accept the documents but purposefully exclude the government's explanation as to why certain redactions may have been in place. As such, I would be supporting my colleague's subamendment that he's placed before the committee.