I'm not shocked at that.
I want to reinforce a point that my colleague Mr. Genuis made, that this is about protecting the interests of taxpayers and safeguarding their hard-earned money.
On the idea that it's somehow the nuclear option to report this to the House, I utterly reject that. Procedurally, what that would mean is that the House would be advised. Should the government fail to abide by this duly constituted, properly passed motion, in the event that the committee adopts it, there needs to be a “what if”. If the government looks at this motion and says that the committee has asked for something and they can just ignore it, then they will. They've done that in the past.
The reporting mechanism is very straightforward. It would inform the House that an order of the committee is being ignored. It would then be up to the House as to whether or not to adopt and concur in that report, at which point the powers of Parliament kick in.
That's really the crux of this matter. In order for the government to be forced to do something, it needs to be elevated to that level. Otherwise, we would have to wait. If we adopt this amendment, the NDP member is suggesting that this committee would then have to become seized with this issue again. The genius behind this motion is that it all gets done in one step. It orders the production...and includes a mechanism that if the will of the committee is not respected by the government, there's then an enforcement mechanism to compel them to do so. Otherwise, this would be an expression of opinion with no actual follow-up.
The reason that this is important is because Parliament is not somehow a backdrop for the Prime Minister. It's not a set in which he plays his role. We're not extras in his movie or in his productions. We have a constitutional duty to hold the government to account. That's the purpose. That's why we're all here. We're not here to enjoy the November weather in Ottawa. We're here to do a job. We're here to pore through the books, bring out the magnifying glasses and go through every detail. That is our role.
This isn't just wanting to get a few exchanges of emails from somebody. These are multi-billion dollar contracts, in which the government seems to have failed to ensure protection for Canadian workers.
It's hard to think, other than with national security issues, of other types of issues that would rise to this level of importance for parliamentarians. Poring through the books to identify how tax dollars are being spent and the impact on Canadian workers are the top two or three jobs that members of Parliament could think of having to do throughout the parliamentary day.
I don't see the problem in reporting it back to the House. In fact, I see the problem if we don't do that, because then we'll likely be back here in a few weeks.
Let's just take that off the table. Let's think of every possible scenario to get a one-stop shopping type of motion to ensure not only that we pass this motion compelling the documents, but that there's an enforcement mechanism to ensure the government respects the democratic will of this committee.