We can agree on making it a friendly amendment, so I will answer from that perspective.
I’d like to answer the question posed by my colleague, Ms. Rempel Garner. I myself have not seen the documents. If we remove businesses’ names, all we have to do is look at the list of businesses—which is public—to know who they are. It would take four and a half seconds to make those associations. In the end, that means the documents wouldn’t really be redacted. Mr. Masse proposed that we get the unredacted documents in order to review them, talk about them and determine what we need. As a committee, we cannot specifically decide what should be redacted or not. I have not seen these documents, so this makes me a little uncomfortable.
Now, as for the Access to Information Act, I am interested in hearing what my Conservative colleagues have to say about it. It remains Mr. Perkins’s motion. That said, the main motion proposes a deadline of 14 days to produce the documents. We have to be realistic. The government will send notices to tons of businesses, and they will send them to their lawyers to get their opinion. We won’t get a single document within 14 days.
Furthermore, Mr. Drouin says he is giving us a chance, but when you pull on the line, you catch a fish. I understand that he is acting in good faith, but if we go down this road, I have no hope of us getting any documents whatsoever. It could only be in the government’s interest for us not to get any.
I would therefore lean towards maintaining the amendment as is, but I am curious about what my Conservative colleagues think of it. I am ready to listen to them.