I agree. Thank you very much. I'll be very careful about what was said in camera. I recognize the rules in Parliament don't allow me to state in public what was stated in camera in the 18 meetings we had on this, when there seems to be a filibuster on getting this letter actually approved and put in front of the Canadian public. I will be very careful, and if you find me drifting into areas where I may be offside, Mr. Chair, I'd appreciate it if you'd correct me rather than have me go to jail...or any other offence that may incur. I'm onside here with my colleagues, in particular because it is important we do the work of Parliament very effectively and by the rules, but I do want this report to get out.
This report started before I was on this committee. I need people to understand that this is a long time overdue. However, getting familiar with this is the role of parliamentarians, and I have become very familiar with this report and what we need to do.
The paragraph that seems to offend is paragraph 23. Paragraph 23 reads:
The Committee also recommends that the Government requests the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate if charges should be laid against George Young, the Chief of Staff to then Defence Minister Harjit S. Sajjan, for his role in providing a blank template of a Government of Canada document to circumvent established protocols to ensure the safety and security of personnel and process, and for his role in the facilitation of the production of fraudulent Government of Canada documents. This abuse of process could have led to the deaths of Canadian Armed Forces personnel, or the ability for non-state actors to profit from a behind the scenes two-stream process for accessing Canadian travel documents.
This is the offending paragraph that people don't want as part of this report, and I fail to see why. We talk about transparency of government; we talk about many things in this committee. This government says many things that it doesn't seem to want to deliver upon.
Let's go back to the history of what's happened here. There was a federal election in 2021, a federal election that the Prime Minister chose to call during a very precarious time in international affairs in the world. A country that we had supported in the rebuilding processes and in the liberation process.... We had committed, as we say, blood and silver to making sure that there was a democracy that was trying to emerge in Afghanistan. All of that fell apart in the summer of 2021. Many other things were going on in the summer of 2021, as well. At that point in time, the Prime Minister decided that it was time to call an election—an unnecessary, very expensive election—in Canada that led to many consequences across this country. The main consequence was our inability to respond to the international crisis that was happening in Afghanistan.
I recall, Mr. Chair—and I'm sure many of my colleagues around the table recall—the time we spent going door to door and actually getting those people who had relatives in Afghanistan who had helped Canadian forces in Afghanistan—