Chair, we've been through this rodeo before. I'm sorry to see the government proposing an amendment that would effectively undermine the entire objective of this motion.
This motion is to order the contracts, full stop, so that we can get to the bottom of why more than 3,000 jobs are being killed in spite of the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies.
The Liberals are putting forward an amendment that would effectively give them wide discretion to redact these documents. It would give them the discretion to do that. The proposed redactions are not redactions that would be done by independent entities. The proposal gives full discretion to the government to redact what it wants, using fairly broad room for justifications. This would prevent the committee from actually scrutinizing the contracts as they are.
Let me underline, Mr. Chair, that the motion we put forward does not call for the immediate release of these contracts. The call is for the full contracts to be given to the committee. The committee would then have reasonable discretion and would, I believe, use its powers responsibly to look at what's in these contracts to consider the various issues and implications of releasing information, and releasing information to the degree that is appropriate.
What the parliamentary secretary has proposed is to prevent the committee, even in private, from having access to this information. I'll make a few points with respect to this.
As members know, or should know, committees' powers to send for documents are limitless. The Privacy Act contains specific exemption language exempting documents that are ordered by a body such as this. Again, the other issues could be taken into consideration and likely would be taken into consideration by the committee when deciding what and how to release these documents, but parliamentarians need to see these documents in order to do their work properly.
I'm disappointed but not entirely surprised that the Liberals are putting this amendment forward, which would effectively neuter this motion. We are opposed to this amendment, and we will continue to fight for Canadian jobs by seeking the full, unredacted documents without giving the government the discretion to redact whatever they feel like.
Thank you.