Mr. Chair, I have just a couple of things.
On the rule of law being intact as a determination that was made at this committee, we had witnesses appear. We had judges appear. We had attorneys general who have contributed to the conversation across party lines, who were very alarmed about the subject that was the study of this committee.
One of the witnesses who was called to this committee was former Judge Turpel-Lafond.
You can scoff, Ms. Khalid, but she sat on the bench and like all of the witnesses, she deserves respect. Your scoffs, Ms. Khalid, are disrespectful to the work that this committee did, which you cited to your benefit.
We had attorneys general, Liberal and Conservative, who said that the issue merited RCMP investigation. That doesn't sound like a determination that the rule of law had been intact. It speaks to how the Liberals said they were going to do politics differently. Bad things were happening in 2014, so they said, “Let's keep doing them.” Let's keep doing them—that's how we're going to do politics differently.
That only people other than Liberals can be partisan is wild. The idea that it's all altruism over there and just nasty partisanship from anyone who is not a Liberal is just not the case.
I don't sit on PROC, so I don't know what PROC members do.
Mr. Ehsassi, I have no idea, so it has nothing to do with me. I signed and submitted this letter because I'm very concerned about what happened. You can say, "We're not going to let it happen again”, but how do we know it's not going to happen again unless we find out what happened?
I have never heard anyone other than Liberal members suggest that journalists would be called before this committee—never, whether in private conversations with my colleagues or in conversations that we're having here today. There has been no intention to call a journalist before this committee. What we want are officials from the government to appear here and officials from the Prime Minister's Office to appear here.
We have heard from Mr. Rankin and from Mr. Nicholson who are prepared to testify that they're not the source of the leak. They want to clear their reputations and clear their names. I would expect that, should there be nothing to hide, members of the Prime Minister's Office and PCO would want to do the same.
What are we prepared to do to identify what happened so that we can prevent it from happening in the future, other than just saying, “Well, Conservatives did this before, and they're the worst, and we're Liberals, so we're the best, and so we're just going to keep letting it happen”? This is just hyper-partisanship, and just saying you are not partisan does not make it so.
Thank you.