Thank you very much, Chair.
I have just two quick points to the comments made by my honourable colleagues.
The first has to do with Mr. Kramp's remarks with respect to the committee decides on the rules. Such a rule does not exist with respect to documents. There is no such rule that exists of when we receive the documents. I'm not aware of any rule, and there's no rule that exists that I've seen in the Standing Orders, the rules in the House and the committee, that the documents received by the committee are confidential, are secret. There are no rules as such that exist.
The second point that I wanted to make, Chair, is with respect to the question of privilege that was raised earlier by Mr. Saxton. The question of privilege pertains to a matter raised in the House of Commons. If that's the case, then the member should raise his question of privilege in the House of Commons, not here in committee, because, Chair, any question that deals with what took place in the House of Commons took place in your capacity as a member of Parliament in the House. So if it's a question of privilege in the House, then this matter should be raised in the House.
The fact that it's being brought forward in committee today again reinforces the point I made before, that this is a distraction. This is a distraction by the government members not to deal with the issue, which is advancing the public interest by making sure we examine these documents so we can get to the bottom of the findings in the report by the Auditor General—particularly some of the elements that come out of these documents that deal with the independence of Madame Ouimet and her office on a very important matter. Many public servants trusted that office, took their complaints and concerns, some of even fraudulent nature—and that's very important to highlight—dealing with government assets, with the mindset that they would be dealt with in the appropriate way, consistent with the mandate of that office. And the Auditor General's office clearly refuted that.
That's the issue here today. I think the question of privilege, again, is a matter that needs to be raised in the House because it pertains to you, Chair, in your capacity as a member of Parliament and the question you raised in the House of Commons.
Secondly, there's nothing in the Standing Orders or in the rules of the House that any documents we receive in committee are supposed to be held in some sort of secret file. I'm not aware of such, and that's why I think that this again is distracting from the issue we need to deal with.