Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Basically, the information on expenses that is being requested, I believe, is already covered under the existing motion that was adopted by the committee for the delivery of documents on June 30. I have no issue with adopting a separate motion, albeit not asking the committee to send for documents related to the expenses incurred to date. This is a burdensome exercise that would then require the department to start searching all over the place for whatever documents may exist related to the expenses. That could be people's emails; it could be anything.
My proposal, Mr. Chairman—and I'll speak to it again a little bit after I propose it—would be to change the words after “the committee” to “ask Public Services and Procurement Canada to provide expense reports” related to expenses incurred to date to fix the technical and mechanical problems that have afflicted this aircraft. Then I would add, “and these expense reports be submitted” no later than noon on “Thursday, June 30, 2022”.
Basically, again, Mr. Chair, just to make clear my amendment, it's to take away the words “send for documents from” and change that to the committee “ask Public Services and Procurement Canada to provide” and then insert the words “expense reports”. The only other change would be, “and that these expense reports be submitted”.
Essentially, Mr. Chair, again, instead of searching for documents and then having to translate all of them or emails, or whatever they would be, it would be that an expense report would be provided by June 30.
I have already discussed this with my francophone colleagues and I think it's obvious that we can reach consensus. We do indeed need to know what expenses have been incurred. If, after receiving this information, we have other questions, then we can request something else or ask for a witness to come and speak with us to clarify the situation.
If this exercise were to require obtaining all the documents in question, then I think that's going too far, because I don't know how many documents would be involved or where to find them.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.