Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here. It's excellent testimony.
I would like to build on some of the questions from Ms. Michaud concerning the capacity in Canada. I have concerns that we relied on the DOJ to find this out.
You've mentioned that we have the capacity in Canada, and yet it seems, from what you were saying, that it hasn't been made a priority by your current intelligence and law enforcement agencies. I do want to ask you a question about that.
Before I get to that, I want to address something with you, Mr. Chair. I want to register my disappointment that you cancelled Thursday's meeting on this study. I do not feel that we were adequately consulted. The standard practice from my last experience with this, before I was away on mat leave, was that there was much more consultation with vice-chairs. As first vice-chair, I do think we anticipated that we would be called to discuss what could be done about Thursday in the event that witnesses were not able to attend Thursday's committee meeting.
Now, that does happen. However, in reviewing the motion put forward by the Liberals, the witnesses who were mentioned on there were not exhaustive. It specifically mentions other “disinformation experts”. I know from past experience that we have had situations where our excellent public servants have come, with relatively short notice, to provide feedback and information. Of course, this area of study that we're working on has an intelligence focus. It has a law enforcement focus. It has a legal focus. I would be shocked if, among all the individuals in our public service, any of them could not have come. I do believe that if more effort were put in, we could have had a robust meeting with other witnesses, perhaps within our own government apparatus, who we should include in this study. I want to register my disappointment in that regard, given that we do not feel that adequate consultation was provided. I would ask that in the future you provide better consultation.
There's a second point I want to make about this. We have a number of other things that we could do as a committee. If we couldn't get witnesses on this important study, we could have reviewed, for example, the Paul Bernardo report that has been gathering dust. The analysts worked very hard on that report. That was an area of intense public interest when this committee was reviewing it. Given that the individual we were talking about was the worst mass killer and rapist in Canadian history and was being moved from maximum security prison to medium security prison, with all the privileges that entails, I was shocked to see that we wouldn't at least look at that draft report. The committee had already approved to study that issue. We had the draft report. It's sitting and collecting dust. Why were we not able to review that report on Thursday?
Mr. Chair, there are a number of studies that we have agreed to as a committee and a number of things we could have talked about. I think it would be shocking to the public to think that a meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security should be cancelled because we have nothing to look into. I just find that completely unacceptable.
Again, to quote the Liberals' own words, Ms. O'Connell said—I would wish to discuss this with her, but she's not here at the moment—“We, as a committee, should be held accountable if we don't take this as a very serious priority.” She said we owe it to Ukrainians “to not wait another minute”. Yet where was the discussion, where was the leadership from Liberal members, to ensure that we had a committee meeting on this on Thursday?
That there was no one who could have, Mr. Chair, I find very hard to believe. I would ask that more effort be put into ensuring that we have this study. If we can't find witnesses, find someone from government. It is important that we get into this issue. But if we can't, let's focus on the work that we've already done. I would ask that if there's no one we can find for this very study, let's look at the Paul Bernardo study.
I wanted to register my very clear disappointment that this was not adequately consulted on and that the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security Committee of Canada failed to have a meeting for an excuse that I don't find acceptable. There's a whole host of issues we could be looking into. It is a failure that we had that meeting cancelled.
Thank you.
With my remaining minute, Mr. Scott, to go back to my question, can you elaborate a little bit on what you'd said to Ms. Michaud? I thought it was a great area of interest that this committee should hear.
I can reiterate, if you don't recall what I said.