Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Minister of Justice and Mr. MacLauchlan for being here.
Minister, I'm going to pick up where my colleague the honourable Mr. Moore left off about the nature of the meeting today.
I took issue with the framing of it when you answered my colleague's question and said we were worried about this descending into a partisan debate and things like that. That's how I took it. In other words, this could become too partisan, and that's why you were bringing in an outside chair.
The chair's job is to be independent. We presume that Ms. Diab is independent. She's not from the same party as I am, but if I ever take the chair, for me, one of my requirements is the requirement of independence. If she's presumed to be independent, why would we be bringing in somebody who is not duly elected, who does not make up part of our parliamentary committee, as opposed to someone who has knowledge of Parliament and has been here?
Is that not essentially saying that our chair here at the committee, as a duly elected parliamentarian, can't handle it? I can't wrap my head around that.