Thank you, Madam Chair.
It's a pleasure to resume the meeting. I trust that this meeting won't be interrupted with several votes, like the last meeting was.
I'm happy to resume. Just quickly, I don't want to belabour any more than I already have the points I made in the last meeting. I want to reiterate that as members of this committee, we have, I believe, a duty. It's very unprecedented to be dealing with something as significant as the intimidation of or threats to a member of Parliament. Whatever we decide here as a committee will be used as a precedent should this unfortunate set of circumstances ever happen again.
I read some comments into the record last meeting regarding our parliamentary law clerk and the testimony the law clerk had put before us indicating that if the law clerk had a set of both redacted and unredacted documents, that would give the law clerk's office the context they need to make a determination as to what they need to keep redacted for the purpose of national security; to also be able to determine whether parliamentary privileges would apply and if there were certain things that members of this committee and members of the House of Commons ought to see in regard to this rather upsetting and sordid affair regarding not only Mr. Chong but other members of Parliament, both past and present; and to make recommendations that would be to the net benefit of restoring our democracy, restoring trust in our institutions and ensuring members of Parliament are free to exercise their responsibilities.
To that end, I also have, Madam Chair, a letter in my hand that's addressed to you. We've all, I believe, been given copies of this. I would like to read it into the record so that we can reiterate the point of what we're—