I will suspend right after my remarks.
The government is answerable to Parliament and this committee. If the committee requests documents, the government is duty-bound to provide them.
In my experience, the law clerk will have comments. I'll speak to our clerk about seeing, perhaps, what's been done in the past.
I can speak to other committees I was on. Given what Madame Sinclair-Desgagné has proposed, keeping this information private actually goes above and beyond what a parliamentary committee is required to do. In fact, as a committee, we could request that the government provide this information without any shield or cover.
What Madame Sinclair-Desgagné is proposing to do is the same process we saw with the Afghan detainee documents from the Government of Canada in the previous Conservative government, as well as what the Canada-China committee attempted to get from the Liberal government more recently. There is precedent for what Madame Sinclair-Desgagné is proposing.
In fact, she's put in place mechanisms that I think will ensure that sensitive information is protected. She did not have to do that. The committee could ask for this information and not concern itself with maintaining any confidentiality. The fact that she's done that goes a long way and I think answers the question of whether it safeguards the information. My view, from experience, is that it does, but we can check on that.
On that note, I'm going to merely suspend this meeting and we will pick it up on Thursday, February 16, at our committee time.