Thank you, Chair.
Let me start by talking about this idea, which was in place last fall when I returned to this committee, of how quickly one gets one's hand up and whether one competes or not. If you go back and look at the record, you will see that the government side probably won that race 80% of the time, if not more. It became very apparent to me, as the lead of the opposition side at that time, that it was a futile attempt to out-race Mr. Saxton, for a couple of reasons. One is that I had two surgeries on my right shoulder many years ago, and it doesn't really work all that well, and he's much younger than I am and much faster, so I wouldn't have won the gunslinger race anyhow. I say that somewhat facetiously, but I wouldn't have. It's kind of not funny. But I could have called the procedural piece and said, “Chair, Mr. Saxton's hand was up before you gavelled the meeting to order; he's now out of order.” You cannot get the attention of the chair before the chair is actually in the chair, which happens when he gavels the meeting to order. But I didn't pull that stunt because I felt we could probably work this out.
The reason we're at this point now, as Mr. Ravignat clearly pointed out, is that there were issues with the steering committee. I do not lay the blame solely at the feet of the government for that, but there is a way this needs to be resolved. The chair has asked for some form of intervention from us to try to figure this out, and we have not been helpful in resolving that. We need to do that on a go-forward basis. The public accounts committee will not end at the end of the F-35 hearings. It will continue on until the end of this Parliament, and we need to find a way to make it work.
Let me restate what I stated about a week and a half ago, about whether this side has ever approached the chair because he's in our caucus. I stated unequivocally then, and I stand by it now, that I have never, nor would I ever, nor do I intend to in the future approach the chair to try to help me get recognition at this committee. I don't do that for two reasons. One is out of respect for the chair, regardless of who the person is who sits in it. Let me personalize it. I have known this chair for about 30 years, from a previous life, not when he was in government but indeed when we belonged to the same union. For those who have been in a union and who understand what the hard stick is, if I even made an attempt, the hard stick would have come down on top of me and it wouldn't have felt very pleasurable. I understand there's no reason to do that, and the chair wouldn't tolerate it. So let me state that clearly for the public to know that it has never happened from this side, from New Democrats on the opposition side, nor do we intend to do that on a go-forward basis.
Clearly, there is an issue around the F-35. It's a very public issue. The government acquiesced and decided to stay in public. If folks had been betting on the last time we stayed in public on a witness list, and the bets were that you would not stay in public, that you wanted to go in camera, all of those who had bet that way would have lost. Now you want to go in camera even though we still have that to discuss. That's it, the dilemma.
The other side of it is clearly in the G-8, where we wrote, as an opposition, a major dissenting report. We clearly had issues. You can see our trepidation about going in camera when our experiences are not joyous when it comes to the government's will to decide to go forward or not go forward. We wanted to go forward; you didn't, so we did not. You can see how we on this side are looking at you and saying we still wish to go forward. What happens if we go in camera and you decide you do not?
You extended the olive branch at the beginning. I would suggest that you continue to extend it, at least on the F-35, to deal with this and get it back on the rails as far as the witness list is concerned and what we intend to do with that piece, since you started down that road. On the other pieces, I think you need to decide where you want to go and how you do that as a process. I think if we end up having a sense of actually being back on track working as a whole committee, we may find indeed that we're able to continue forward in a manner where there is trust on both sides, and we may actually start working on some reports where perhaps there is less political fire, because there's a lot at this one—I understand that—and the committee would get back to kind of a regular routine.
I would point out one statistic to the folks on this committee. I said it once before, but maybe not at committee. When you check the chart of who has the most in camera meetings, it's us. Part of that's by necessity, because we write a lot of reports; it's not just because we're secretive. Somehow we have to find a way to be less apparently secretive. That's hard, and I don't suggest it's not.
I look to my colleagues to try to help that process. I hope you will consider continuing, at least for the F-35s, to show willingness to actually get to the bottom of what happened with this project, and do it in a public manner. I think it would suit the government better, but again it's their decision to make to keep it open rather than closed, for all the apparent reasons of the political pieces that fall into that. Regardless of what you do behind closed doors, will anybody believe you? I don't know.
At this point, on the believability around the F-35 file—and it's just that file the committee is looking at—I don't think you have a lot of trust on that one, folks. So I suggest you try to keep it open.
At the end of the day, I recognize the reality of seven versus four and how that vote can turn out. But I offer my comments and we'll see where it takes us.
Thanks, Chair.