Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you, Mr. Bédard, for being here today.
I really appreciated the soliloquy by my colleague there, though none of it is true, but I do have some quotes from people that I want to run by you.
Former senior parliamentary counsel for the House of Commons Steven Chaplin stated that the June 10 order was “both 'completely unprecedented' and a likely abuse of Parliament's powers”, that “the House of Commons is simply acting as a 'mailbox' for the police force, which is not one of its duties”, and that “It is not a parliamentary or constitutional function of Parliament to help the police.”
In the same vein, former RCMP deputy commissioner Pierre-Yves Bourduas also commented that we all know that “the rule of law is predicated upon a separation between what [Parliament is] doing and what law enforcement agencies are doing, in this case, the RCMP.”
Would you agree with those statements?