I am happy to be able to continue to express myself on the issue at hand.
First of all, I would like to congratulate my colleague, Ms. O'Connell, who has brought up some useful points and who has gone to the heart of the problem. I am talking about what is called “psychological projection,” which is when we project our intentions on others.
My Conservative colleagues are saying that we are indulging in “petty politics.” That is not the case. We are defending our position based on well‑founded principles, such as the fact that we should not summon political staffers to testify before parliamentary committees. My Conservative colleagues have often stated that Ms. Telford has already testified twice before such a committee. Actually, it has happened three times in all of Canadian parliamentary history that someone who holds such a position has testified before a parliamentary committee, and in two of those three cases, it was Ms. Telford. That's it.
Why would we seek to establish a new tradition? Is it really to study the issue or to find out what the Prime Minister knew? There's another way for any MP to go about this, and that's to put the question directly to the Prime Minister. We have the privilege of being able to ask the Prime Minister questions many times a week during question period. The Prime Minister even spent a whole day answering all the questions put to him by MPs in the House of Commons. That is the best forum to do this.
If we would like our wonderful parliamentary traditions to be respected, we have to stop seeking the testimony of a political staffer. It makes no sense, and I won't tolerate it.
It is unfortunate that people have cobbled together a bunch of falsehoods to lead people astray. Once again, I will go back to this wonderful saying: “An out‑of‑context text is but a pretext.” People are claiming that because Ms. Telford has already testified twice, she can testify a third time.
The context is a political assistant has appeared twice before a House of Commons committee, which has never happened in the history of Canadian Parliament, and they may appear a third time.
Given the circumstances, you can understand—Canadians who are watching us do—that this is the exception that proves the rule. We're well aware that calling assistants to testify before a committee is not a parliamentary tradition.
In addition, my NDP colleague Ms. Blaney, for whom I have a great deal of respect, asked why the Liberals so dead set against holding a public inquiry and seem to believe that an independent special rapporteur will be able to reach the same conclusions as an inquiry. The reason I think it's important to let the independent special rapporteur do their job is that they may choose to hold a public inquiry. If they do, I would applaud that. We will support that, and I'm sure that individual will explain to Canadians how the inquiry would proceed.
I imagine that if a public inquiry were held, it would be very similar to the inquiry conducted by the commission under Justice Dennis O'Connor in the early 2000s. It would have the same type of guidelines.
I can already hear the comments from here, out of context: We want a transparent public inquiry, we'll want things cleared up, and so on.
However, what the people making those remarks will forget is that a public inquiry involves reviewing documents about national security matters. Yes, an inquiry may involve such documents, but it's wrong to think that it could be done in a completely transparent manner. It cannot. Part of the inquiry must be conducted in camera to allow for the review of certain documents. In fact, that is what Justice O'Connor did to produce his report on the Maher Arar case.
What we were able to read in his report was public information that he had the right to release. However, there was other information I didn't see. Perhaps members of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians have seen the full version because they have the required security clearance. That's good what is out oh I'm good thank you.
If we're on the same page about this, that's great! I invite my colleagues in the official opposition to say so publicly. I know my colleague Ms. Normandin said she was prepared to do that and that's very good. When you're grounded in reality, you can have a discussion and negotiate. However, we can't continue to talk nonsense and mislead Canadians by saying that it's possible to get all the information when we know full well that it's not.
That's deceitful, and it would only make Canadians more cynical. I wish they could focus on one political party, but all political parties will suffer. There's a reason why airlines don't run attack ads against each other. It's because people don't distinguish between Air Canada and WestJet when it comes to safety. Only in politics do parties fight each other, and people are allowed to smear the reputation of politicians who aren't of the same stripe.
Some people believe that this has no impact on politicians. That's not true. Canadians can feel betrayed by all political parties. It's very important that we don't overstep the mark in terms of acceptability in political debate. If we do, we will ruin the system. We will taint that pool of good faith that all Canadians have in all politicians. So I urge my colleagues to come to their senses, if they can. Let's not overstep the mark and disappoint them in our political debates.
We've seen what happens when boundaries are crossed. We've seen it in other countries, including the United States, where anything goes now. As my colleague Mr. Turnbull has very clearly explained, we're only making Canadians more cynical of their own government, of their own representatives.
We really need to overcome this challenge and get back to what's reasonable. We need to provide Canadians with real options and have clear, genuine, reasonable discussions about what we can and cannot do.
If we do that, we can strengthen our democratic system. We mustn't subject it to undue stress. We need to make sure that we're always able to negotiate with our allies on sharing security-related information.
With respect to what we're discussing today, to get us out of this impasse, we could quickly decide that our discussions will be frank but difficult, and they will always remain reasonable.
Madam Chair, I will turn the floor back to you.