I am strictly replying to the comments that Mr. Poilievre made moments ago in this committee meeting. He has said so many times that we are getting the worst results for the highest investment. Only Mr. Poilievre and only the Conservatives would measure results strictly by the financial impact and the financial outputs associated with this. Never mind the fact that we have one of the lowest death rates per capita. Why don't we start measuring things based on that?
Let's drill down into it a bit deeper, because Mr. Poilievre sure does like to retweet numbers from The Post Millennial and the Fraser Institute. If he's looking at the September numbers—and I really wish I could share my screen with members—Canada is at 9% unemployment and the United States is at 8.4%.
My question to Mr. Poilievre is quite simple. Does he believe that saving 0.6% in the unemployment rate is worth tripling the death rate of COVID-19? Maybe that's something Mr. Poilievre can square later on, but it's the reality of the situation. If he wants to continue to measure the success of dealing with the pandemic based on fiscal inputs and outputs, it's no wonder the Conservatives can't seem to form government. They are incredibly out of touch with the reality of Canadians and what Canadians are going through right now.
I'll jump back to this motion that we're talking about. Since the time the motion was put on the floor and discussion was going on about it, the Clerk of the Privy Council has come forward to say that he would always make himself available to the committee to provide input into how these decisions were made and how decisions are made when it comes to redacting information. I would have thought that to be a slam dunk. I thought that would have been the easiest thing for all members of this committee to accept.
There is an opportunity to have the Clerk of the Privy Council come forward to explain what some members are complaining about. I apologize if I come across as being very cynical about this, but if you're not willing to do that, it really only leaves people with one conclusion: that there is a complete lack of interest in knowing what really happened. Rather, the interest is to continue to drum up support for these conspiracy theories that are being propagated by Mr. Poilievre in hopes of character assassination to reap political gain.
The reality of this situation is that the vast majority of Canadians, in my opinion, can see right through that. Time and time again this has been the plan, but Canadians are smarter than that. Canadians accept the fact that there are many times when certain individuals have to properly redact information before it's turned over as requested.
Mr. Speaker, the decision on what to reveal is made by non-partisan public servants, for whom it has long been a tradition not to reveal cabinet confidences. That has been the case going back to all previous governments of all party stripes.
The NDP should start coming clean about the taxpayer-funded resources it has been employing to illegally finance campaigns....
You can probably figure out, Mr. Chair, that I'm quoting somebody else, and I'm sure that by this point most members of the committee know exactly who said this. It was, of course, the Hon. Pierre Poilievre when he was minister of democratic reform. He stood up in the House as a result of the following question:
Mr. Speaker, in response to an NDP access to information request to see the Minister of State for Democratic Reform's briefing books, the PCO first refused altogether. Then, after we filed a complaint, it finally disclosed the minister's 200-page briefing book.
The problem is that the PCO blacked out 99% of it. It even redacted what looks to be two thirds—