I wanted to go back to one of the items he raised. After he made the point, I was interested enough to go over and pick up the article. This is from Kady O'Malley's live blog. She had quoted from a statement from the Prime Minister's Office that was provided to the Ottawa Citizen, which contains the following wording, and this is the justification not merely from the members here, but we know this is from the PMO—the same PMO that would almost certainly be the source of authorization for any leak, so that makes the wording particularly interesting. It says:
Since the opposition has been unable to offer any evidence that there even was a premature disclosure of the bill during six different committee meetings, the government members on the committee have decided to oppose any motion that randomly calls anyone as a part of their fishing expedition....
Leaving aside the unnecessarily snarky wording in that.... I myself have managed to never snark even once in 16 years in the House of Commons, as everybody knows.
At any rate, I just wanted to ask this. Is it reasonable to assume that the opposition can provide evidence, when the Liberals and the PCO are the ones who have the evidence and they're withholding that evidence by refusing to allow this motion to go forward? Isn't this a perverse situation, in which they're saying, “We have evidence that could settle this matter. You haven't provided it, because we're refusing to provide it to you; therefore, we want to shut down the hearings in which you have failed to produce the evidence that we actually have in our back pocket?”
Does that seem as odd to you, Mr. Schmale, as it does to me?