Thank you, Chair. I will again try to be very, very brief. I believe this will be the only intervention that the government will make on this issue.
We will be opposing the motion, and on very good grounds. There is a reason that committees have the ability to determine among themselves whether or not proceedings should go in camera, namely one size does not fit all. The motion before us gave us specific instances when a committee should be allowed to go in camera, but it cannot possibly anticipate every situation that would require an in camera discussion. It simply can't.
Let me give you a few examples—and just a few. We've seen examples of this before. I'm not going to mention any names. A witness might be unable to appear because of a personal reason, say a death in the family or a severe illness. The information that the witness might have would probably be critical to the committee in their judgment of the particular issue they're studying. But in the same fashion, if it were not in camera, the fact that this witness had a personal issue they were dealing with might come out in discussions about why there was a delay, why they weren't able to attend the meeting last week when we scheduled them, that type of thing. I think that's unfair.
Perhaps a witness is unable to attend or does not want to testify before a committee because of what they believe to be the possibility of some personal security issues. They might feel threatened if their appearance were noted publicly. Their personal safety might be put in jeopardy. We have a subcommittee on human rights, where I believe there would be some witnesses who would not want to appear in public for those very reasons.
Sometimes documents come to committee that reveal personal information about a witness that is not supposed to be made public, but inadvertently this information might come out because the witness appeared in public.
My point is that as much as I appreciate where Madam Turmel is coming from, there is no way any motion could be constructed that could possibly capture all of the in camera provisions that might be requested. It just can't, and that's why the committee must have the ability to determine, on their own, whether or not proceedings should go in camera or remain in public. If the motion could possibly capture everything, I would be amazed, but I just know it's not possible.
Why would we want to constrict committees to a set of examples that could prove problematic in the future? It would be the worst thing, in my view, for parliamentarians to adopt this motion and then all of a sudden an example comes forward that was unanticipated and a witness says, “This is putting me and/or my family, and/or others, in jeopardy. I would like to have testimony given, delivered to the committee, but I would like it to be in camera.” And the committee says, “I'm sorry. Because we adopted this motion, we can't go in camera.” That would be ridiculous.
There are examples that will be unanticipated. This motion does not capture it, and for that reason, we will be opposing the motion.
Thank you, Chair.