Mr. Chairman, this is just ridiculous. I have to tell you, I don't know how long the public accounts committee is going to stay here. We are all pledged, including you, to be non-partisan and to get to the point of what we're trying to do. Okay? As long as Mr. Poilievre, in particular, who seems to try to go for the jugular of whatever party he's after.... We can do the same thing, because, you know what, you'll be in office for a while, but the day will come around, too. That's not the way this committee needs to function, and it's not helpful.
I have a letter here that went to Minister Stockwell Day December 7 from some RCMP in British Columbia. Has he reacted? No.
You guys...I'm sorry, all members of this committee, before I came here, had a copy of the same kind of correspondence that was being sent to the members of this committee. No one bothered to take any action until our colleague did, and he's the one who did the digging and did the work. Now we're talking about the minister having an independent investigator.
Well, you know what? It sounds to me like an independent investigator.... He's going to call in some people, interview them in his office, and he's going to decide, “Well, there's no real issue”, and he will do exactly what apparently was done by other members of the RCMP who refused to bring this issue forward. I think it's not the way we need to go.
As far as the member goes, I really wish he would leave his partisan hat at the door so that we could be constructive and get some work done. We're the ones who have a motion tabled that these members appear before April 16. That's our next meeting. We don't want any delays. We were the ones who were pushing this thing for months to try to get this on the table, and it was only a miracle that we managed to get a motion passed to begin with because you guys didn't support it.
We've got it on the table now. We've heard this testimony, with no help from the government, so let's get on with this. Let's pass this motion. Let's get on with dealing with this motion. This is an important issue that's come before us and we need to deal with it in a non-partisan, proper manner, as taxpayers expect us to.