Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Needless to say, I've been lobbied heavily by both sides, and given there's a possibility that once again I'll be the swing vote, I've given this a lot of thought.
I don't think anybody here is going to accuse me of being shy in terms of jumping on things that I believe need to be jumped on, but I have to say that discretionary call we already made when we brought in the minister was a big step. There would have been a legitimate argument for this committee to say no, we're not going to go down that road. They could have done that and stood by that with a credible argument. But instead we went the other way, in large part because the opposition controls the committee when it comes down to crunch votes. But we did it, we held the thing.
The minister did come and acknowledge that a mistake was made. Now he calls it an administrative error. I reject that as being just a little too cute by half. But the question remains, after a minister comes in and says there's been a $122,000 mistake--his chief of staff made the mistake, he didn't know about it, he's been properly admonished, he's not even in the office any more, he's gone--is this a hanging offence? Are we going to call for a minister's resignation?
Personally, I think the climate has gotten away from ministerial responsibility and needs to come back that way a little more, but in the current climate I just don't see that. To me, at best this is another fishing expedition; at worst, it's a witch hunt. I'm not comfortable. I don't think there's enough here to warrant the next step, so I will be voting against.