Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank my colleague for his point of order. I guess we're going to agree to disagree on that point.
I'll go back to my comments and say that I have never, in all my time as an MP—and it's been just a little bit over a year—seen an opposition party refuse to allow a public servant with relevant information to testify before a committee, especially when that public servant is the top boss. I've said this before in previous comments, and I echo what my colleague Ms. Dzerowicz said earlier. If we place doubt in the Clerk of the Privy Council, then we absolutely have a much bigger issue on our hands than debating the subamendment to the subamendment to perhaps another subamendment.
It was clear from the outset what this committee requested in regard to documentation, and it was clear from the testimony of the Clerk of the Privy Council here what we would receive from him. In fact, again, over 5,000 pages of relevant information were released with limited redaction. The clerk noted that he would endeavour to ensure that this committee would have the information it needed to fully understand what occurred with the design and implementation of the Canada student service grant.
He kept up his end of the bargain. My colleagues on the other side know full well that the redactions present in those documents are about unrelated matters, but due to the nature of the document, they were redacted to allow for the information about the CSSG to be present. The law clerk himself redacted further, not only when he received the documents but he redacted some of the redactions. That is my understanding.
The motion by this committee recognized that these unrelated cabinet confidences would be redacted. This committee also understood that the parliamentary law clerk would remove some personal information from the documents as well. The Clerk of the Privy Council could be saying this himself if we were to invite him here. I'm happy to hear that Mr. Julian says he wouldn't have a problem to have Mr. Shugart before us because I really believe we should, sooner rather than later. He actually took the extraordinary step of leaving in the names of public servants, and advised the Privacy Commissioner that this would be the case. The Clerk of the Privy Council cannot control the fact that it was the motion by this committee that later caused the law clerk to redact those very names that the clerk endeavoured to release. If he could be here, he could explain that positioning himself.
This committee received these documents on time. They were forwarded to the law clerk, as was expressly stated in the initial motion, and here we have the law clerk completing his own redactions right around the time of prorogation. The law clerk released these documents to the members of this committee. The interesting thing here is that clearly the redactions by the law clerk are much more intensive than the redactions in the original documents handed over by the public service.
In order to ensure full transparency, the government House leader released the less-redacted documents anyway. In essence, the Government of Canada fulfilled the promise of the Clerk of the Privy Council and the request of this committee vis-à-vis the motion requesting documents. If the Clerk of the Privy Council were allowed to testify, he would back up this very simple fact.
This brings us back around again to why we are still here debating this subamendment. Quite simply, we are here because the opposition majority cannot accept that they were actually given everything they wanted. It doesn't square with the narrative that they are trying to put out in public, just as the testimony of the clerk would not fit the narrative they are trying to put out in public. Here we are debating a subamendment to an amendment to a motion that, in the end, is just a procedural trick to try to further this cheap political stunt that is now falling apart day by day.
We are weeks into this at this point. We have pre-budget consultations that this committee is mandated to complete, and I fully agree with Mr. Julian that we have to get to that.
We have a fix before us. With one simple vote we could set aside Mr. Poilievre's motion today, not defeat it but set it aside. We can invite the head of the public service, the Clerk of the Privy Council, Mr. Shugart, to this committee, and then he, along with relevant deputy ministers, can present their thinking and reasoning around the documents that were provided.
They could walk us through how all discussions and decisions regarding the Canada student service grant were unredacted. They can walk us through why some matters were redacted, and how they were unrelated to our topic of study. They can finally put to rest any concerns of the opposition.
I know this wouldn't fit the narrow political interests that the majority opposition has tried to push. I know this would completely blow apart the fictitious narrative that Mr. Poilievre is trying to spin; however, so be it. Mr. Poilievre and the other opposition members want to get to the truth, so here we are. Let's get to the truth. It's time for the non-partisan head of our public service to come before us and give us the truth.
I have done this before. I am going to repeat my comments. I urge colleagues to put aside their partisan differences, to finally return to past times of collegiality and decorum in Parliament, to remember we are here in this place to serve our constituents and to put their interests first. Let's show some respect for our professional and non-partisan members of the public service, not use them as ploys in a political game.
Mr. Chair, I ask colleagues to work with us to approve the subamendment to invite the Clerk of the Privy Council and other deputy ministers here forthwith.