It's always a pleasure to be at public accounts.
I wanted to touch on a couple of points. When we were talking about leverage, I'm wondering whether the government is more concerned about what it negotiated as opposed to protecting what's in there on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies, because the difference, it seems to me, is one of leverage. At the time we negotiated these contracts, the government had zero leverage, because it had spent some time negotiating an unfruitful contract with CanSino. At the time we came to the table, we actually had less than little leverage, and I think the pharmaceutical companies likely saw this.
With respect to liability, I would be open to a legal opinion from the government or from members of that side who suggest there's a liability potential for the government. I also suspect there are other opportunities for us to receive these documents, and that rather than compelling them from the government, we could get them directly from the pharmaceutical companies themselves. At that point, it's not the government that's providing the documents, it's the pharmaceutical companies.
I think the motion itself is reasonable. I think in the interests of transparency—and Madame Sinclair-Desgagné referenced the international principles of transparency—Canadians have a right to understand or at least know that their members of Parliament have seen the documents.
I don't believe it's a compromise that we get to see unredacted documents. That is something that parliamentarians are allowed to see anyway, so if the sense or the implication is that it's a compromise that unredacted documents would be provided when they are able to be summoned in any event, that isn't really a compromise on the part of the government, in my view.