Thank you, Madam Chair.
I will just say that I am disappointed by the lack of information provided by the Ontario Liberal Party today and the lack of respect, frankly, especially knowing the tight time frames that our committee is under.
The Ontario Liberal Party has had four days since Thursday, when we passed the motion here at committee, at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, to have someone appear regarding the leadership announcement event by the Ontario Liberal Party.
Mr. Tunstall, you were the one offered by the party. What was frustrating this morning was that you're not new to politics. You've served as executive director of the party multiple times, and you've been involved in politics and in public life as a staff member for many years.
We got a letter from the legal counsel of the Ontario Liberal Party this morning. It goes through a bunch of reasons as to why you're not an appropriate witness, after the party offered you to come here today. The only thing they offer at the end here is, “Mr. Tunstall would beg for the Committee’s indulgence and be excused from making an appearance.” They didn't offer an alternative to say, “Okay, here's somebody we can provide who would know information”.
The legal counsel, I'm sure, and I'm sure you and others in the Ontario Liberal Party.... We're now nearly five hours into committee testimony here today. We've asked for the production of documents multiple times, and to have to go back to legal counsel at this point.... Legal counsel had no problem sending us a letter over the weekend begging for you not to appear, but you had no time to offer to get an answer about document production or provide some assurances of what happened. You say how it innocent it was, but nothing is provided.
It is extremely frustrating, and what I'll do here is ask for unanimous consent, Madam Chair, to do the same thing that we did for the production of documents from the clerk this morning during Mr. Fergus's testimony with his team. We all agreed by unanimous consent for a similar set of documents.
I will ask for unanimous consent that an order do issue to the Ontario Liberal Party for all copies of emails, memoranda, records of communications, including text messages and instant messaging application messages, or any other documents that are under the party's control concerning the Speaker’s tributes to the former interim leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, provided that those be deposited with the clerk of the committee no later than 5 p.m. today.
I will just say that there's no reason why any of that should be a surprise. They've known for four days at the party, and they should have known that this request was coming.
I will ask for unanimous consent on that, Madam Chair.