I don't recall that there was one.
Frankly, the idea of a perjury prosecution or a holding for contempt in the House is like hanging a dead person, if you'll pardon the expression or the metaphor. By that point, with the damage done to the individual from the scrutiny given to his or her testimony, comments by the committee, a report to the House, and the House perhaps concurring in the report, what's left to be done with regard to that person?
In formal terms, yes, the House could well undertake a motion of contempt and go through the step of, in theory, imprisoning the person for some period of time, until the end of the session, but I think we'd all acknowledge that's getting a little far fetched. I really think committees ought to show themselves to be ready to respond in terms of calling upon witnesses to explain themselves when there are discrepancies in testimony.
Mr. Chair, in view of the recent passing of Bill C-2, I think many members would agree that we now have a regime where there's greater accountability on the part of public government officials to Parliament.
It may well be that in keeping with that, a report by this committee to the House could say here's an example where there was not sufficient accounting, with specific reference to testimony that might be incomplete or evasive in some cases. It may be that a useful role the committee can play now is to give a sample of bad accounting, if you like, to a parliamentary committee, by reference to a particular piece of evidence, without looking to nail anyone to a cross in particular.
It could be an example where we studied the testimony and, in our view, the committee was not spoken to truthfully or as truthfully as it should have been. In the future, the committee would expect the witnesses would govern themselves accordingly.