Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank my colleague for presenting this motion. I think it's an important motion and I think it's in line and in spirit with what many Canadians would expect from this committee, so I think it's an important motion that members of this committee should take seriously.
The parts I don't necessarily agree with within the motion are related to some of the intent of the motion. It's my understanding that the Auditor General's office has received a request from the Trudeau Foundation to audit it, so it agrees with the member in this case that it should be audited. I agree with that point from both perspectives. It's my goal—and, I think, our goal at this committee—to find a way to best account for what's happened here, and I think the person who's best able to do that is the Auditor General. The member remarked that the most important piece to this would be an independent investigation and that an independent investigation should be conducted by independent offices, and I agree. The Auditor General is an independent office and an independent officer of this place and could and should investigate this as a matter of perception for Canadians, because, of course, the conflict is there.
I don't think, however, that members of this committee should undertake a study that would involve many of these members when the Auditor General has the tools and capacity to do that work. We have many things to do in this committee, and I think this motion would be best served by this committee if all parliamentarians here could find a way to come to a consensus to have the Auditor General do this investigation. That would be my hope. I feel that many of the aspects contained within the motion, however, are not necessary if we're trying to find a way to make the independent piece of this accountable.
I would suggest that we find a way to create either an amendment or a process that would clarify the willingness of this committee to, one, see the Auditor General conduct an investigation; two, do so in a way that's transparent and independent; and three, come back to that report, because we always study the reports of the Auditor General. I would await the report of the Auditor General so we could actually conduct that investigation properly and according to the goals of this committee.
I would seek advice from my committee colleagues as to what they think about that process and if they're amenable to seeing this amendment be more consistent with the goals of this committee, which is to ensure that the work of the Auditor General—in this case, the work of auditing the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation—be conducted. However, I don't think it requires members of this committee to summon witnesses before that audit is complete.