I'm not surprised, but I'm disappointed that a well-thought-out, well-articulated and well-crafted motion by my colleague Mr. Cooper could not simply be accepted by the committee, because on the face of it, it looks completely reasonable and the arguments made by Mr. Cooper, I think, are valid.
The notion was made by so many members around this committee that we couldn't trust the parliamentary law clerk to go through unredacted documents and make a determination as to what documents could be received by this committee when we were studying the foreign interference matter, both in the context of the privilege motion for Mr. Chong and, writ large, the foreign interference election study that was happening at that time.
Here we are again. The notion would have been and the argument was made that this committee and this place are too partisan, so we need a public inquiry, even though that public inquiry was initially rejected ad nauseam until it became so obvious, through whistle-blowers, that this needed to happen. The argument was made that we can't trust the parliamentary law clerk and this committee, that we can't trust anybody but a commissioner, in this case, Justice Hogue. She has, to my knowledge, every security clearance that she needs to see all of these documents, yet this government still doesn't trust the madam justice they have actually selected, which we agreed to, to lead this commission.
One can only be left with the inescapable conclusion that the government has something to hide. They don't trust the parliamentary law clerk, who has, in my opinion, far greater experience in dealing with what parliamentarians can or can't see or what the public should or shouldn't see. However, now this has been offshored to the commission, and the same blocking of this information is evident by the proposed amendment to my colleague's motion.
I don't know why my colleagues presume to know whether or not representatives from the Foreign Interference Commission shouldn't come here. We're not compelling them to come here; we're simply saying they should be invited. I imagine that somebody from the commission, Madam Hogue or her representative, would be mature enough to decide whether or not it's in the commission's interest to come to the committee on this particular issue, but we're not even going to grant Madam Hogue or her representative that opportunity, based on the amendment by the Liberals in this case. We believe that Mr. Stanton has valuable insights to provide to this committee about what information the commission needs in order to fulfill the second mandate of the terms of reference that Madam Hogue has, which is to issue a final report by the end of this year.
Time is of the essence on this particular issue because this House will be adjourning for summer in a matter of weeks. These are four witnesses. That's a couple of committee meetings at most, committee meetings that our chair has aptly shown us he's able to get extra time and resources for, with all of the other workload we have.
I think we should reject the amendment by Ms. Romanado and proceed with the motion in its original form put forward by Mr. Cooper. There is nothing unreasonable about that motion, and we now find ourselves in this debate again.