Thank you, honourable members, for your questions and clarifications.
I put forward the motion because I wanted the committee to adopt it back in the fall, when I first submitted it. Unfortunately, that was not possible. I believe there was opposition to the 14-day deadline. If members find that deadline too tight, I am amenable to changing it, depending on what members feel is a reasonable deadline. Perhaps 21 days would do the trick.
As for Mr. Bittle's comment about the correspondence, I want to make clear that the correspondence in question is between the Canadian Transportation Agency and Transport Canada, and between the Canadian Transportation Agency, the minister's office and the minister, himself. Obviously, I am not trying to capture correspondence between internal office staff.
I would be shocked if there were thousands of pages of documents. In fact, my feeling is that anywhere close to 20 emails would be a lot. The agency is supposed to be entirely independent, making its own decisions. As far as I can tell, this kind of correspondence exists, given that we saw similar exchanges after receiving documents related to other motions for the production of papers. It may not have been a lot, but it did exist.
Nevertheless, when a member of my staff made an access to information request, we were told that there was no such documentation. That is surprising because the opposite is true. The committee received documents, but there were none according to the response to the access to information request. Something is wrong there, so I think it's important to set things straight.
That is why I am asking the committee to adopt the motion.