Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is something that's important to me. Right now, a government member is rejecting the premise that the witness's answers were wholly unsatisfactory. I'll get back to that. The government member believes he is entitled to criticize the questions committee members ask the witness. I don't think he understands how committees work. The premise of the question is established by the person asking it, and the answer is based on the question being asked. The witness is expected to answer in good faith.
Here's a good example of a question that the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology did not ask. It ties in with my initial questions to the former minister regarding his meetings with Amber Batool when she was chief of staff at SDTC. Mr. Bains said at first that he had met her maybe once or twice. Then he said that he had met her a few times. When I asked him to give me an idea of how many times he had met Ms. Batool while he was the minister and she was the chief of staff at SDTC, he said he wasn't sure whether it was once or twice, or 10 to 15 times.
That is absolutely impossible. It shows that the witness is acting in bad faith. Anyone here would be able to ballpark how many times they had met someone over a given period of time.
I could tell you how many times I had met most people. At the very least, I could provide a ballpark number. Not being able to provide such a number shows bad faith. That is unacceptable.
Mr. Bains didn't answer a single question committee members asked him, even though they were put to him calmly and respectfully. That is shameful. The work we're doing matters. The Auditor General flagged a number of very problematic issues in her report. Mr. Bains was the minister in charge of SDTC when the situations described in the report occurred.
He should therefore have been able to answer our questions, but he didn't answer them. He had numerous opportunities to do so today, but he didn't. That is on top of the example I gave. All of that shows his lack of good faith and plain refusal to answer parliamentarians' questions. That, in my view, is a breach of parliamentary privilege.
I'll leave it there. I hope we can proceed to a vote as quickly as possible to ascertain whether it does amount to a breach of parliamentary privilege. As far as I'm concerned, that's exactly what happened today.