Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few things to say.
Number one is that the Government of Canada is not the Liberal government. It's the Government of Canada. The government represents all Canadians, not just the Liberals. That's number one.
Number two is that with parliamentarians on the committee, it's not just the opposition that exercises oversight. It's also MPs on the Liberal side. Kelly will tell you that I voted in favour of the McKinsey contracts being released. I don't like when they try to make redactions. I don't believe that's appropriate. I don't think anything should be withheld from parliamentary committees. I find it very insulting when they say that employees of the civil service can access things and parliamentarians can't. I am very much of the school that the committee has a right to unredacted documents. We're all of the same mind on that issue.
With respect to the question of the NDA, in the same way that I trust the committee members absolutely, I also trust the high-level employees of the civil service. They have to sign NDAs because that's what it says in the contract. The contract itself requires that. It says—which the McKinsey contracts do not—that every individual accessing it needs to sign an NDA.
That is the reason this is on the floor. It's not the same as those other contracts. I didn't suggest that we have NDAs for McKinsey. I would never suggest NDAs unless I'm told that there's a legal reason to do so because of potential liability. That's the difference with this specific group of contracts. They were negotiated at a time of great need, with great urgency. That was what the suppliers—who had great leverage at the time—requested.
There is trade secret information in those contracts, I'm sure, in addition to pricing and other things that might have been confidential to them at the time. They probably told every country that they had to do that. Countries leapt to sign whatever they could to get vaccines for their people.
I get the parliamentary privilege. I get the idea that people don't want to sign NDAs. I've heard from my colleagues all across the opposition benches that it's an uncomfortable thing to be asked.
I'll give an alternative. I am willing to go back to the department to ask them to go to all these suppliers—the pharmaceutical companies that have agreements—and see if they can find a way to have these NDAs waived for members of this committee and parliamentarians. If you'll give me until the next meeting, I will go back and see if those companies will say that, despite what it says in the contract about NDAs, they agree that parliamentarians....
What Mr. McCauley said is absolutely true. They probably never thought of that. If he goes into the House of Commons and despite his NDA discloses the contract and what he remembers of it, he likely doesn't have any liability under the NDA because he did it under his parliamentary privilege. Perhaps if the companies are approached with that in mind, they will agree to say that the contracts are amended and they can provide it without....
Mr. Chambers suggested another option, which is to go to the companies. If you summon documents from the companies, there's no liability to the government because you've summoned them from the companies. I don't know that we need to go down that road at this point.
Based on what I've heard today, it's clear that most of my colleagues on that side do not want NDAs. It's clear that the chair felt uncomfortable about that for other reasons in terms of parliamentary privilege. If the committee would be willing to suspend this discussion until the next meeting, I would be willing to figure it out with the department and come back to you. Hopefully we can get those companies to waive the requirement, and then we don't have the legal risk and don't have to worry about it.
I can't assess that for you. I haven't even read the contracts. I'm almost one hundred per cent sure that this is not in the contract, but I entered into contracts in my life as a general counsel of a company, and there were fixed penalties for violating the terms of the agreement. I don't believe that is the case in these agreements. You could theoretically, just by a form failure, hit a fixed penalty. Again, I don't know what's in these contracts. I haven't seen them. I don't think that's there.
My real request would be for the committee to consider—because I don't think any of us wants to put liability on the Canadian taxpayers that does not need to be there—giving us until the next meeting. We'll go back and see if these suppliers can waive it. If not, then the committee can in full knowledge of that make the decision to go ahead anyway, without the NDAs. That would be my request.