This is unusual, but I'm taking a different opinion from that of my honourable colleague across the hall.
The intervenors can probably add a significant amount of interest and/or information that certainly might be helpful to Parliament. My concern, of course, is whether their testimony is relevant to the discussion right now with regard to the alleged failings of Madame Ouimet and/or others. Or is it simply a matter for operations of the government? My argument would be that if the suggestion is that it is operations of government, then I don't think these intervenors should be at the public accounts committee. But they should have the availability of appearing before government operations; that's where they would belong.
However, if their testimony were related to this particular instance of the allegations against Madame Ouimet, then it would be a whole different situation. I think we need to make that clear so that we don't end up doing another committee's work while following along one path. If the information would come forward at steering committee, we would give that a thought. To me, it's really difficult to go forward and decide what we need for witnesses until we know which direction we're going with Madame Ouimet. Once we have that kind of testimony, we will really know if we need to go down that path. I wouldn't want to prejudge and suggest that we need to bring in witnesses like that, when quite frankly they might belong at another committee. They might belong at ours. Once we hear the testimony from Madame Ouimet, I think it would really clearly establish the boundaries for that.