Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Again, I've only been here three or four months, so I'm very much a neophyte here with respect to panels and committees like this that bring in top-notch experts who are dealing with fundamental challenges, not just in Canada but around the globe. When I was back home, which I go back to every weekend when a flight will allow—or a snowstorm, for that matter—I speak to a lot of my constituents, and a lot of these constituents tell me of the work that we're all doing here in terms of bringing the panels together to speak to health, to speak to transport, to speak to global security. To me, this is transparency; this is openness. Using words like “order” as opposed to “request”, I just think that speaks to.... I guess on one side, people across the way may believe that's not cynicism, but I believe we're feeding into a machine here and it's not an overly healthy one. I'll go back to a hypothetical suggestion here.
Maybe it's not a thousand documents, maybe it's two thousand, maybe it's three thousand, so we're going to ask Dr. Theresa Tam to personally go through her phone log and her texts, and at the same time we're asking for a very efficient and expeditious review and triage of a very serious problem, with her at the helm. That was one of the original things that I brought up in our own pre-committee around this amendment.
Again, when I say I believe that this committee is transparent, I believe wholeheartedly in that. That's not a qualifier. I believe that's what we're all doing here.
My concern is the workload that we're going to put on individuals who are actually trying to triage this problem right now. I wanted to put that out there publicly on the record. Of course we're for openness and transparency. We have a difference of opinion here, but it should never be said that I don't think anyone on this committee is for a lack of transparency. We're for transparency and efficiency and getting work done.
Thank you.