Madam Chair, we wouldn't be in this unfortunate situation if the minister had been more forthcoming. No one has asked him to talk about the specifics of allegations, but we are asking whether he had knowledge of allegations. It's not about whether he took action to investigate those, although we heard testimony today that he clearly could have. It's the fact that he took no action to protect serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces against very serious allegations, which have gotten a lot more serious over the weekend.
If the military ombudsman does appear, there may in fact be things that he believes he cannot say. He is free to do that before the committee.
This also illustrates a second problem that we've dealt with for a long time, which is that the military ombudsman is not an officer of Parliament, but in fact reports to the Minister of National Defence. That creates the situation we're in today. I've long called for the military ombudsman to be an officer of Parliament. We wouldn't be in this situation if he had that independence.
I think it is necessary for us to proceed, but again, I would stress it could be precluded by action from the minister to provide the information that he failed to provide in our last meeting.