Mr. Chair, I admire my friend Mr. Gerretsen's passion and he is very direct, but sadly, most of what he was saying is actually wrong. It's important for the record to be reflected and perhaps for him to learn a bit more about some of these things.
He is right that the PCO is part of the government. It is the ministry that advises the Prime Minister. The PCO would act and advise the Prime Minister, but in terms of a determination about one name out of 73 to the RCMP, the Prime Minister would be part of that determination. This is not the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on some island; they're in Langevin Block for a reason. As a privy councillor, I know how that works and how they advise cabinet and the Prime Minister. Really the clerk, in many ways, is the deputy minister to the Prime Minister, if you compare it to other ministries, so I'd invite Mr. Gerretsen to learn a bit more about that.
On the UC motion, I've heard several members of the Liberal caucus say that if there's a unanimous consent motion, it reflects the will of the entire House. No, it reflects the will of the House at that time. It is a unanimous consent, and people who are not there are not part of it. It's the will of the House and the members present at the time. That's part of the Standing Orders.
When it comes to the redactions, I've been involved in litigation as a lawyer and I think it's important to note that the redactions are not picked by the court. The government will provide documents and will claim privilege over certain documents, and after months of prodding, they finally released them to the court to make the determination. The court would just respect or reject a claim of privilege or claim of redactions.
I personally believe the redacted memo from the Clerk of the Privy Council, had it not been redacted, would have a lot of answers in this story, but Mr. Gerretsen was suggesting that the court just reviewed all of them and decided to redact. No. There are claims made by the government when it presented the documents to the court and I think that's important.
On the code word issue as well, the CDS was shocked because he said the use of code words would not have been intended for the purposes. He did not dispute that they were used. In fact, he was challenged in court, and his comments were with respect to the intention behind the use of code words and that acronyms are used in the military. Therefore, we have to be careful not to make conclusions on things that aren't supported by the stories.
In my remarks, I was appealing to certain members of the Liberal committee because I do know they care about their military communities. I said that in my remarks. I know Mr. Gerretsen does and I like the way he described the community and the base being one.
Regarding the Norman family, I first met Mark Norman's father before I met Mark Norman, because General Norman was Commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada. Probably feeling that his dad was so closely connected to RMC, Mark went to Queen's University to stand on his own, which I admire, even though Queen's is technically the second-best university in Kingston.