The Speaker said a lot to us the other day, Mr. Christopherson.
The third paragraph of this letter makes a statement, “a parliamentary committee” has the right “to call for persons, papers and records, but recognizes that this power should not be exercised without considering the public interest.” Further down it makes another statement that,“The House of Commons and its Committees have an unfettered right to send for persons, documents and records.” Those two sentences contradict each other, because it's not unfettered. It has to be exercised in the public interest. The next sentence says, “This position was reaffirmed by Speaker Milliken”. Which position? The position that the right is unfettered or the right has to be exercised with consideration for the public interest?
In my view, the Speaker's decision obviously considered the public interest. He didn't direct the government to produce the papers or create a crisis or anything. He gave the government and the other parties in Parliament time to work out a way to do this without putting troops in the field at risk, etc. So the letter doesn't make sense. What does this position refer to? A reasonable limit on the power, or an unfettered power? That's my problem with the letter.
Second, there's editorial expansion in the fourth paragraph that says, “The Public Accounts Committee is concerned that the denial of documents to parliamentary committees is a recurring problem”. I don't remember when we discussed the recurring problems. We discussed one problem, which was our problem to get those tapes unredacted. I don't remember any long discussion about recurring problems. I don't know why there's any need to make the point about something we didn't discuss.
Those are my concerns with the letter. Why don't we simply wait and see how this matter works out?