Thank you.
I agree with Mr. Van Bynen that there has been a fulsome discussion, so I'm not going to repeat the points that I've made earlier and that others have made.
I also want to just say I agree with Mr. Kelloway that I also don't take this position on redaction and disclosure based on any negative view of the Canadian public. That's not my motivation here. My motivation here really is to ensure that independent committees exercise our full powers in a way that's independent of the government and in a way that's responsible and in the best traditions of accountability and transparency.
What I wanted to add to this is that my excellent researcher has sent me the grounds for redaction under the Access to Information Act, so I thought I would just read those into the record so that my colleagues are aware and we know exactly what we're doing before we vote on this and agree to redact information. Here are the grounds under ATIP: information obtained in confidence; federal-provincial affairs; international affairs, defence and national security; law enforcement investigations and security of penal institutions; safety of individuals; economic interests of the Government of Canada; personal information; third party information; advice; testing procedures; solicitor-client privilege; statutory prohibitions; and information to be published.
If that's a complete list, then I'm led to believe there are 13 separate grounds for redaction. Those are exactly the grounds for redaction that resulted in the completely unacceptable material that we had delivered to this committee back in February and March. I think all committee members who had a chance to review that information would, contrary to what Ms. Sidhu said or her admonition, agree that we didn't get the information that we sought.
I don't know why this committee would now formalize the adoption of criteria for redaction that everyone in this committee knows are going to result in us not getting the information that we want, but rather just getting information that any person in any community in this country can get from this government. We are basically neutering this committee's powers of production and guaranteeing that we're not going to get the information that the substance of the motion wants.
I agree with Ms. Sidhu that we should be getting information that we want, but mark these words here, because when we get this information if this passes.... I must say for the record, I'm a little disappointed in the Bloc's agreeing with this because my understanding is that last week the Bloc did agree with a redaction process that would result in more production of documents.
We will revisit this issue again in September when we get these documents, and we'll see whether or not the ATIP criteria result in this committee getting the information that we really want to get, because if it doesn't, I hope that all of us are open-minded enough then to review this and make sure this committee can actually get the information we want.
Finally, I would just say I don't think there's anybody on this committee who wants to harm federal-provincial relations or any other such things. I think all of the colleagues on this committee want the same thing. We're the health committee. We have a vested interest, as no other parliamentarians do, to look into, in detail, matters of fundamental importance to public health in this country. These are things like determining the about-face on masking, where we had the chief medical officer and the health minister of this country telling Canadians not only that we didn't need masks but that masks would be harmful to public health. That's what the position of PHAC was about three or four months ago, and now we know that's completely not wise public health advice.
When we're told by Dr. Tam that she changed her mind because of recent evidence.... For us to be able to test that as parliamentarians, we need to have access to the full information that she had to determine whether that is actually true, and whether or not Canadians are getting the unvarnished facts.
This is where I think Ms. Jansen's point is well made. The Canadian public may or may not have lost trust in this government, but we risk having them lose trust in their chief public health officer and the government if we, as parliamentarians, fail them and do not seek out information when we have such a colossal, blatant about-face in public health policy, if we're not prepared to look at that in an unvarnished courageous way. That's what I think is behind these motions, not a nefarious attempt to violate someone's rights.
I'm going to conclude by saying that, as you can see, some of these criteria are so broad that if we're allowing the vetting for third party information, for personal information, for safety of individuals and for advice, we are guaranteeing that the documents we will get back from this request are going to be so heavily redacted as to be virtually useless to this committee. Again, mark these words, because come September or October when we get these documents back, each member here who votes in favour of this and denies that will be held accountable. We'll see if those documents really do provide the information that we really need to see and want to see, as Ms. Sidhu passionately claimed.
Thank you.