Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Through you to MP Fisher, on the comment about imagining that the names of public figures were to be released, quite honestly, that's why we are public figures, for that purpose. The Minister of Health has a tremendous responsibility in making sure she is accountable to Canadians and, quite frankly, to the opposition in this case, and that's what we're trying to get to the bottom of.
The motions that Mr. Fisher references apparently were agreements made off-line. I certainly wasn't privy to any of those being asked of us here at HESA. It means we don't have to do that. Nobody has approached me to make any of these sorts of deals off-line either, so, Mr. Fisher, they do not necessarily pertain to here.
I simply implore the committee.... We've worked extremely well together. We've heard lots of very important testimony. In light of everything we've heard and the consistent lack of preparedness and readiness for this pandemic, I think Canadians certainly would appreciate the ability to know that the government has, perhaps, learned lessons and is looking forward to implementing certain things that maybe weren't in place before, and that's fine. We want to make sure we have those as part of our report so that it can then become lessons learned for the next government in any other potential pandemics.
There's no need, most times, for these government members to defend the government. Particularly in light of the WE scandal that we saw, there really isn't any reason to stand and try to protect the government. There is every reason that transparency should be even more important today.
I'll leave my comments there, Mr. Chair, but I implore the members to reconsider, thinking that there's an opportunity in front of them to stand tall and really promote transparency here at this committee, where we can all do that together in a non-partisan way, but certainly that would begin with the withdrawal of this type of motion.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.