Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all of you for your appearance here and being with us today.
I'd like to dig a bit into the importance of this committee.
Mr. McGuinty, you, your team and your colleagues have done a remarkable job of making sure that the work your committee does has been in the main non-partisan, with a tremendous amount of collaboration, and with what I hope are recommendations that all of us take seriously.
One of the concerns I've had over the course of the last few weeks particularly has been the attempt to politicize the nature of the work you do. I want to quote a specific comment that was made by the Leader of the Opposition in which he says, “NSICOP has been used in the past...and is being used here...to avoid accountability. It takes place in secret and is controlled by Justin Trudeau.”
I think it's important for Canadians to hear first-hand from you, as the chair, (a) whether or not that is true, (b) how you believe the role of NSICOP should be seen and, most importantly, how Canadians should view the committee and the important work your committee does.
Perhaps, Senator Lankin, you might also like to weigh in on this.