They've indicated that it wasn't the case when I stepped out of the room, just so I'm certain.
This isn't about putting a dissenting report forward because we disagree or someone disagrees with the majority view of the committee about what we learned in this study, or giving drafting instructions or doing clause-by-clause with analysts. This is just saying that, even though it's a fact that they were required to give us the documents and they didn't do it, some members of the committee are going to make the choice to send the signal to the entire bureaucracy that, for all time, if they don't feel like it, they don't have to send documents to committees of Parliament. That is the message for every future government.
When committees have this issue in the future, the bureaucracy can always look back to OGGO.
You know, Chair, you might have to modify your opening. You might have to call it the “once mighty OGGO” because we can't even demand papers from the government departments and have them send them to us. It turns us into a joke.
When we give witness lists to the clerk and they call for witnesses, why would anyone come? We'll issue them a summons—so what? We have the power to send for papers and people. No, we don't. We demonstrated that ourselves.
What's that phrase that I hearken back to? Maybe it was a lesson that I got when I was a young guy: I'm not mad; I'm just disappointed. Yep, I'm just super disappointed.
I can't speak for anyone else, but when I visit a schoolroom and the kids ask me why this job is important, I say it's because our democracy is so important. I had the privilege to visit two schools in my constituency last week. One was in Brockville and one was in Westport. I just said that our democracy is what makes Canada special.
I was elected in 2018, 2019 and 2021, and in none of those elections was there bloodshed. Nobody was jailed and not a shot was fired. It was peaceful in those cases, even if, much to my chagrin, it was a continuation of the government. Before my time in politics in 2015, there was a peaceful and orderly transition between one party to another because we have traditions, laws and past practices that guide us. The underpinning of all of that is that this place matters.
When people see that it stops mattering and they continue to centralize the power so it's just a few individuals and everyone else just becomes window dressing, then I think we'll find that's not something history looks kindly on in a broader sense.