Madam Chair, I'm very concerned by the comments of my honourable colleague Ms. Vandenbeld, that she would say that witnesses are opposition or government and that somehow we determine at the committee whom to hear from based on partisan perspectives. That doesn't do justice to the witnesses or to the committee, which wants to hear comments independent of partisan-appropriate comments on a very balanced and non-partisan study. This is above partisanship. This is what is in the best interest of the Canadian Forces and our country, so it's very disconcerting to hear it put like that.
Let's talk about the witnesses who are in the motion. There is the Minister of National Defence. One could argue that he is a government witness, not an opposition witness. That's if we were even going to look at framing it in any kind of partisan terms, which I would highly propose not to do. Second, we're looking at the acting chief of the defence staff. He is the top military person—again, not a Liberal/opposition/government witness. There is the soon-to-be vice chief of the defence staff, who is the second in command to the chief of the defence staff. There is the head of the Canadian Forces national investigation service. There is the person who wrote the report from which Op Honour resulted.
These are critical witnesses. These are the logical place to start this kind of discussion. They are not opposition or government witnesses. They are the right foundation to get the information to provide us—all of us on committee—with a starting point.
We have every opportunity to call witnesses after that. In the interest of due diligence around a good study and in the interest of figuring out how many meetings we need to do, and to do justice to it, we need to get started. This motion gives us a good foundation to get started on this study. Then we have every opportunity to revisit additional witnesses based on the information we get from these witnesses, to do justice to this auspicious responsibility we have been given to do this study.