Transport Committee on April 20th, 2010

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Just very briefly, Mr. Chair, there are two things.

One, of course, is that your conclusion was that it was questionable whether something happened and therefore, in the interest of erring on the side of greater caution, the apology was required. I want that to be clear for the record.

Secondly, it may be instructive for us. I don't know how we can develop a process for discussing a potential brief such that we don't create further breaches along the way. Maybe that's something you can consider with some suggestion to the committee, or that the committee could take up at some future point, but creating a process whereby we can do that without creating further problems or even venturing into grey areas would be instructive.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you for that intervention.

Mr. Volpe, on the same point of order?

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Yes.

I was here for the apology. I thought we had dealt with it. But this is an indication of the kind of mess that we get into, because we are towards the last set of questions about some very serious issues with respect to aviation expenditures and how those expenditures are made. We were in the process of dealing with a single-source contract that, in our view, compromises the whole program with respect to national security, and here we are, talking about a question of privilege to eat up that time.

I'm sorry that we got to that point, Mr. Chairman, but it looks like we're going to have to relieve ourselves of the opportunity to get officials to address some of these issues for us, issues of substance.

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor]...point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you very much.

With that, I'm going to adjourn the meeting and thank our guests for attending.

I'm sure we'll see you back here in the near future.

The meeting is adjourned.