I know the opposition members are waiting with bated breath for those comments.
Mr. Walsh, thank you for being here. I want to go back to something you said before, which is very, very true, which is that it is the committee's responsibility to determine whether or not privilege has been breached.
It would appear to me that the germane questions to be asked are very simple. They are questions for the ministers who will be appearing before us later today in that they supplied information, the government supplied information, to Parliament, and the Speaker felt the information was not sufficient. It would appear to me that the questions would be best put to the ministers to get their explanation as to why the information they supplied was, in their view, sufficient.
The troubling part is before we've even heard testimony from the ministers, I read in media reports, particularly the Hill Times, that Mr. Proulx has been suggesting that the opposition, at least from the Liberal perspective, may be going down a track to finding contempt in the government on this issue before any testimony has been given. I don't know if you have a comment on that.
We've talked about the tyranny of the majority, but it would appear to me that if that is an attitudinal approach of opposition members, and you mentioned before if the opposition is united in their opposition to the government—which is a nice way of saying coalition—really, these committees serve no useful purpose. The testimony serves no useful purpose.
If the united opposition is predisposed before coming to committee that they will find a ruling of contempt or make a motion of contempt on the government, what are we doing here?