Through you, Mr. Chair, thank you for the question.
As I indicated in my opening remarks, the power to send for documents and papers is rooted in the Constitution. It is constitutional in nature, and will prevail over ordinary statutes unless there's an explicit provision that would override privilege. In the past, there were examples where there was initial resistance to produce documents. We can think of the vaccine contracts for the public accounts committee. This is part of the public domain, so that's why I'm providing this as an example.
Sir, you mentioned the study that the heritage committee was conducting on Hockey Canada. There was some resistance at first about providing documents that were subject to solicitor-client privilege, and after discussion, these documents were provided to the committee.
I will mention the fact that solicitor-client privilege does not prevail over parliamentary privilege, and this was recently recognized by the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario in the Laurentian University case.