I had put up my hand previously because I wanted to get agreement or find out where we were on the timing of our meeting next week. I've been texting back and forth with some members and I understand that there is agreement not to hold the meeting on Monday. I don't think we came to a decision on that, so I would like to have that clarified—that the meeting next week, the 106(4), won't be on Monday. If not, I would probably move that, unless we all agree.
I wasn't really prepared to speak to John's motion, so I'll just let my colleagues speak to it first and maybe come back to that. I would say that I'm broadly in agreement with what John has said.
I have to say as well that I'm not going to move anything at this meeting, but I plan on coming back and reading very carefully the motion of the House on production of documents. It seems to me that the government has not complied with what we passed. I'm going to go back and read that very carefully, but there were set deadlines for production of documents. We were told there were millions of documents from the Clerk of the Privy Council, and we have had only thousands that have gone to the law clerk. That is not in compliance with what the House ordered.
I know there was an amendment to the House order to help the government prioritize the production of certain documents, but it didn't eliminate the obligation of the government to comply, with those documents. The other thing I would say is that it's pretty apparent to everybody that the first tranche of documents that came to the committee was utterly useless. The first tranche was no more than public speaking notes that were probably accessible to any Canadian at any time. Now, though, we're starting to see documents released to the law clerk that actually have real information in them that is, frankly, as John just pointed out, revealing some troubling aspects of the handling of the COVID issue.
Anyway, my inclination would be to support John's motion. The more information we have before this committee in unvarnished fashion, the better we as parliamentarians on the health committee can carry out our duties.
Thank you.