Mr. Chairman, I think Mr. Poilievre's comments are very valid and ought to cause the committee some considerable reflection. Because obviously, as I said earlier, the credibility of every committee, to some degree, in my view, depends on its ability to insist on being told the truth, particularly by local witnesses, that is, people who have seen committees and how they operate and come here with some fairly sophisticated awareness of the dynamics of committees.
You can rag the puck for the five or six minutes you need, and then the questions start all over again with the next line of questions. Witnesses can leave and the committee has gained nothing from the time they've spent. People should not think that they can do that as a sport, as it were, and that committees can't do anything about it. However, it is the case that it is not easy to do something about it in any effective legal sense. I do believe, however, that this committee could have some impact on some of the individuals here.
I've been through this report. There are some times when I, as a lawyer, am looking at two statements and I'm saying, hey, at the very least this begs an explanation. Whether the explanation will be sufficient to explain the discrepancy and the matter goes away, or whether the explanation doesn't do that and the person is in deeper doo-doo, I don't know. But there are times, with some witnesses, when the discrepancy begs explanation. To some extent, this committee owes it to itself, arguably, to seek that explanation and for others to see that they can be called back to explain why it is they told the committee this one day and told somebody else, under oath, something else. Why couldn't they have told the committee the full story when they were first here? That alone, I would suggest, would be a sobering experience, not just for the witnesses in question but for those others who might one day foresee themselves being witnesses. They can see that you are prepared, as it were, to flex your muscles.
No, you don't have prosecutorial powers. You don't have jailing powers, as such, or other penal powers, but you do have the moral authority of a body that represents your constituents, your public, and you expect to be told the truth. And when you don't get the truth, you're going to ask for some explanation. You're going to ask for some accounting.
That's accountability, arguably, of a kind this committee can effect.