Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I also want to mention three things from my perspective.
First, I believe we can get to a consensus on this—and hopefully the members opposite will agree—because this is truly in the interest of Canadians. Canadians deserve to know that MPs have access to incredibly sensitive and important documents on what the government dealing with, particularly in this public accounts committee. I recognize that this is in the interest of Canadians. I think my colleagues from the Bloc and the Conservative Party, and hopefully from the Liberal bench, will also see that this is an important piece of information.
My second principle is the rights of parliamentarians. Both previous speakers and Mr. Housefather mentioned the rights of parliamentarians. We have a letter from the law clerk in relation to those rights. It's not a matter of whether this is possible. It's certainly possible. There's a difference between the Government of Canada and Parliament. The Government of Canada, from my perspective, should not have come into an arrangement that would have the possibility of breaching its confidentiality with companies, knowing that this committee or Parliament had an ability to get those documents.
That's one very important fact of this. Maybe in the future or in other dealings with the government, this could be a consideration when entering into contracts and agreements.
Another part of that is that I also agree that we can disproportionately damage Canadians. I don't think that's what any of us wants to do here. I don't think that the procedure laid out in the motion from the member from the Bloc Québécois or the amendment of the government.... I believe both have the requirements that would ensure that those two first principles are met—that the rights of parliamentarians are protected and the interests of Canadians are met.
I think these are the real questions for us as a committee. What level of satisfaction do we require in order to exercise our rights? What process is the best function to do that? Where will we get most of that information?
We need to get to an agreement that we are going to actually see these contracts. I think we've done that point and we all agree—looking at this amendment, the government does in fact agree—that this is a matter of interest to Canadians that should be reviewed in this committee. I agree with that. That's good production so far.
As I said, the second piece is the rights of parliamentarians. To my colleague from Edmonton West's credit, I see his argument relating to the fact that the amendment is insulting in some ways in asking parliamentarians to give up an aspect of their duly granted rights in this place, which is an obligation that is part of this work in public accounts.
The third principle, however, is at what cost this committee exercises those rights. With this current amendment—which I'd like us to debate, because I'd like to get further answers on from the government bench—is it reasonable to ask this committee to sign an NDA for some of these things?
I can see in the instance of national defence, where we're talking about all kinds of matters of national security, maybe a NDA is responsible there, but as the member from the Bloc mentioned, this is a commercial contract. For other commercial contracts that would be entered into by a Liberal or a Conservative government—even a New Democratic government—I'd hope that someone would press on and see that these commercial contracts don't deserve the extraordinary protection of Parliament. They may get the extraordinary protection of the government, but not the extraordinary protection of Parliament.
Those are some of the questions I had in relation to the member from the Bloc's motion, the difference between that and the amendment from the government, and the three principles I just mentioned.
That's what I would offer, and I hope to hear some important information on that.