Thank you, Mr. Richards.
As was mentioned, Chair, that's why I tried to tie this in. I appreciate what you're saying, and I will not read this whole book. When you talk about privilege, it's in place for a reason, as I pointed out. It's there to allow us to do our jobs as members. Without these rules, we find ourselves in an interesting situation, because how many times can this happen, or how many times will we allow it to happen, before we take it more seriously than we're taking it right now? We want to continue with this investigation. There are others who don't. What does this say to those who possibly might want to foster their relationship with certain reporters, with the media? It says that the privilege I was mentioning doesn't mean much, because the investigation is going to be short and sweet, and probably not get to the meat of it, which is about who had access. Question those people, and try to find out who did it.
Chair, with any investigation, which may slow it down from happening again, if the people who have access to the legislation knew that should a leak happen again in the future they would most likely be called before this committee, would they be more likely or less likely to do this type of activity again? I would say, probably not.
Although we are a friendly bunch, being called before a parliamentary committee and asked to face questions on whether or not they were the source of a possible leak probably isn't that much fun, and probably quite uncomfortable. It probably causes loss of sleep and probably causes a whole bunch of stress they don't need.