Thank you, Madam Chair. I hadn't asked to speak, because I know there are others who have something to say, so I will try to answer quickly.
In his responses, Mr. Sabia clearly said on two occasions that he could not supply documents to the committee. The Auditor General was also very clear in her address, and said even if her office had access to all the documents, she could not give Parliament detailed information about these analyses because they are classified as cabinet confidences or secret documents. She spoke afterwards about some of the shortcomings identified in the structure of the wage subsidy.
I think that the role of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts includes being aware of what's going on. I'm totally surprised and absolutely dumbfounded by my colleagues' reaction. I sincerely thought this motion would be agreed to quickly and that all members of the committee would support it, given that it would enable the members of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to learn the truth about public accounts, rather than hear about it secondhand from the Auditor General, who has seen things that we've been unable to see. It's as simple as that. I just wanted to clarify things.
There's another point I'd like to clarify. While I would never attempt to have this committee depart from its tradition of submitting unanimous reports to the House of Commons, I would like to point out that motions don't have to be unanimous. In other words, we are not required to agree all the time. May I remind you that the committee has adopted a number of motions, but that it has also rejected others. Indeed, some motions put forward by colleagues like Maxime Blanchette-Joncas of the Bloc Québécois were negatived here in committee. So I don't see how our desire to collaborate and submit unanimous reports to the House affects our work.
I'll certainly admit to being surprised by the reaction of my Liberal colleagues to this motion, which merely requests documents from the Department of Finance and the Canada Revenue Agency. If they can't disclose these documents for one reason or another, they simply need to tell us and explain why we can't have access to them. Then at least no one will be able to say that the committee did not ask for access to the information it needs to conduct the same analysis as the one carried out by the Auditor General at this stage of the Canada emergency wage benefit program. It's as simple as that.
I find it amusing to hear my colleagues say they want to move quickly in order to have time to ask the witnesses lots of questions, and then take so much time to say so. We could have already put this motion to the vote and moved on to something else, including questioning the witnesses.
I hope I've answered my colleagues' questions. We could adopt this motion very quickly. After which, the Department of Finance and the Canada Revenue Agency could respond to the motion and then we, the committee members, could decide what to do with the answers we receive. For the time being, I think that it's legitimate, justified and very appropriate to continue…