Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would argue that what's pathetic is the Conservatives' fishing expedition, which has been going on since we started this study and, I would say, even going back to the beginning of the foreign interference....
We have a report before us right now, and this report is about a serious issue concerning a Conservative colleague, and the Conservatives don't want to get to it. They don't want to report back to the House. All they want to do is play games.
They are only following the leadership of their supreme leader, who constantly doesn't want to see the facts, doesn't want to be briefed on anything, and doesn't want to know the truth so that he cannot be blamed afterwards for fudging the truth, and for, obviously, being extremely dangerously irresponsible in almost every intervention I've seen that concerns public safety and that concerns the security of Canada. Canadians should know how dangerous the leader of the Conservative Party is and how all the Conservative members are just following in a lineup, taking his lead and ready to create fear amongst Canadians.
We have a Privacy Act. Those redactions are not just made willy-nilly without any serious thought behind them. The Prime Minister himself does not sit there and redact all those documents. The Prime Minister does not have time for that, and neither does the PMO. The departments and agencies those documents come from, just like when anybody makes an access to information request, have a role to play to make sure that information is protected. That has been happening since, I think, this act went into place in 1983. This is nothing new. It shouldn't be shocking.
The Conservatives complied with this all the time. It's just that with what's happening now, it doesn't matter who it hurts or how dangerous it is, they cannot get enough of making accusations and coming to conclusions before having any evidence before them.
Everything we have heard at this committee, so far, has led us to the fact that, yes, a serious incident did happen. I do not disagree with Mr. Cooper when he says that a member of his party should be concerned as to why he was not informed when he should have been informed about what was happening. We know that to be true.
How do we correct that? That is this committee's role. Why did that information not get to Mr. Chong? Why did that information not get to the then public safety minister? The public safety minister should have had that information. There is an issue with that information getting there, and we should be recommending how we can resolve that issue, but Mr. Cooper's not interested.
Mr. Cooper does not want to resolve any issues because he is following his leader's direction, which is to just make any kinds of statements. They make the statements and figure out the facts later. They try to fill in the dots and go on fishing expeditions to destroy people's credibility and careers.
It doesn't matter who gets in their way because they're power hungry. They're so power hungry that they cannot see the damage they're creating along that path. I warn them that this is a really dangerous path we're headed down. We've seen it play out over the last month in the House because they've taken—I would say this is what I'm seeing—the position that they are just going to steamroll ahead.
Again, I have to emphasize, and Canadians need to know, that there have been many occurrences, even at this committee, where we've said, “Let's send this to NSICOP. Let's get this studied properly. Let's have a national inquiry.” The government has worked with the NDP, without too much help from the Conservatives, on coming up with a plan to have a full national inquiry on this issue. I think that's a responsible way to deal with this and to also deal with the expanded types of threats Canada is facing right now, but the Conservatives weren't interested in that either.
When we were having the study on foreign interference, and time and time again, we wanted to also include other issues, they said, “No, we just want to talk about our ridings that may have been affected and only those. We don't want to talk about anything else,” because their interest is only about gaining power.
That is the only thing. It's not about the good of Canada, what's good for Canadians, what's good for government or what's good for Parliament. It's all about power, and that's what we're seeing play out here again. It's, “Let's not report back to the House. Let's not try to fix the system. Let's try to blow it all up. Let's see how we can do more damage.”
We did get the facts here at committee. Let's get the facts. The facts are that there is a broken process, and we need to fix that process, but instead of fixing it, what I'm seeing is a two-year-long study. It's absolutely ridiculous. That's one way to never get anything done at this committee. At least let's report back.
I would like to submit a report and show that all the work we have done has amounted to something, rather than taking another year to do this privilege motion. It's absolutely ridiculous.
When the House referred this motion to us, I don't think the House or even your colleague expected to have this privilege motion go on and on. Even when we had your member here as a witness, nobody cared to ask him any questions.
Mr. O'Toole came. He also has experienced issues in this area. Everyone wanted him to be here. We debated a motion to try to get all these other witnesses to committee. Those witnesses came, and Conservatives were not interested at all in hearing from those witnesses, so I think I will call for a suspension of today's meeting, please, Madam Chair.