Mr. Chairman, I know that Mr. Young always likes to talk about the coalition. I would like to ask him to respect our work, as a member of Parliament and member of a political party. We are independent from all other political parties. I don't know if it amuses him to do that, but he can't speak for us.
We see that the motion as presented to the committee last week was amended with the support of the opposition. That is why today we have a thicker document, which contains a report.
Mr. Chair, I am not worried about those paragraphs. They do define cabinet's responsibility quite precisely. I think that all of this has been well explained here. Cabinet has the right to keep the minutes of its meetings, and certain documents, confidential. However, it was clearly said that when a bill is introduced, members have the right to have all of the information so as to be able to vote. They must know what they are voting on. They must be able to debate the bill in the House of Commons. That is the responsibility of members, of the opposition.
I don't see why we should remove that part. I read the report and that is very clearly explained. There will be other testimony in this report stating that we did not receive the information that we should have received within the prescribed timeframe.
It only says that cabinet has certain rights. Parliament may express positions on certain things, and if we want information to be disclosed, there is a process that allows for that. Clearly we were not given the information that we should have had as representatives of the people. We had to wait four months before receiving the documents. Mr. Young is trying to make us believe that cabinet gave us a nice package last week and that we should be satisfied with that. However, even as we look at this big package that he gave us—someone even said that it would take us until July to read all of it—we see that we still have not received some of the information we wanted regarding costs.
It only says that cabinet has certain rights. I have absolutely no problem with that. Yes, it does have rights, but we have rights too, and that will be mentioned in the document.