Chair, this question—the first question in particular—goes right to the heart of what we are talking about. I consider it a natural and a perfectly justifiable thing for a committee of the House of Commons to ask for information, including cabinet confidences, in this case or in any other. Equally, as I said at the outset, the executive branch has the constitutionally affirmed privilege of withholding certain information in order to be able to do its job. In the case of the WE Charity question, the government provided considerable cabinet confidence. The Prime Minister and ministers spoke to the issues even though they contained cabinet confidences, and, pursuant to that, the documents themselves were provided in considerable volume.
That does not change the constitutional convention that, for reasons of supporting responsible government and the prerogatives of the executive branch of government to do its job, the executive does have the prerogative to withhold cabinet confidences even when the legislature asks for them. This is a point of tension between the two branches of government, and it is not always convenient, but it is a part of our constitutional structure, and indeed it has been affirmed by the court—as recently as this summer, by the Supreme Court of Canada.