Mr. Chair, the amendment proposed by my wise colleague and the remarks that he is making have made me prick up my ears. I must tell you that I, myself, have given much thought to this issue and that I was inclined to propose an amendment like this.
However, as I was thinking about it, I realized something. The power to subpoena witnesses is mostly found when an entity exercises judicial or quasi-judicial functions. We must not forget that we are looking at it from the committee's perspective. We demand and give the opportunity to demand that people come and testify and bring documents. In doing so, we would significantly restrict the freedom of individuals in Canada. We would end up judicializing the process. The subpoenas would be challenged in the courts. That is precisely what we wanted to avoid. We wanted the parliamentary committee to be able to manage its own way of governing.
We expect the committee to be able to develop rules. There will certainly be rules that could be developed. What won't appear is the power of constraint. The power of constraint is precisely what would bring us into a sphere other than revision, in a sphere other than the oversight of entities. Here we want to see how entities that depend on the federal government do their job. With respect to these entities, the committee is inevitably leveraged through the executive, through the government, to ensure the presence of individuals and the production of documents.
Thank you.