Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I can understand, and I will support, what the parliamentary secretary suggests, that the transcripts from our in camera meetings be destroyed at the end of the session. It is logical, because we have all agreed that there is nothing of consequence in that.
Beyond that, when I first came to this committee, I had a very peculiar experience. While the Bloc Québécois was publicly denouncing me in my riding on the pretext that I was not participating in parliamentary deliberations, Mr. Crête, at this table and at in camera meetings, was trying to reduce the possibility that some committee members might share their time with me so that I could ask questions. I am sure that Mr. Crête was quite capable of behaving in this rather surprising, but perhaps understandable manner for a politician, because it was never to be made public that he and his party were talking out of both sides of their mouth at the same time. You can say one thing in public, and say another in private. The fact that these discussions were secret made it possible to say one thing and the opposite at the same time.
Personally, I found the situation quite amusing when, because of an indiscretion that I played no part in, the newspaper La Presse was able to publish discussions that had taken place concerning the difficulties I was having getting speaking time, when Mr. Crête was trying to prevent other members of the committee from giving me time while simultaneously his party was publicly denouncing me for not having participated in debates in the House. Finally, I find that this is really very funny, when one considers that even the statements made by Churchill during the war when he was half-drunk were published—they were never able to marshall the privacy that he might himself have dreamt of—and we are deciding that what we say is so important that we must protect our right to say one thing in private and its opposite in public.
On the other hand, if we agree that our private meetings are only to chit-chat about things that are of no interest, it is perhaps the most ecological idea to take those papers and recycle them at the end of the year. That is why will readily support the motion put forward by the parliamentary secretary. I did nevertheless want to share my amusement with the members of the committee at the notion that the secrecy of our discussions could assist certain members of the committee to say one kind of thing in public and the opposite in private.
Thank you.