My amendment is very simple. I'd like to get to the truth, without exhausting the committee's bandwidth or that of department staff.
The holidays are around the corner, and it's obvious that the deadline Mr. Richards is proposing in his motion isn't reasonable. I discussed it with the Conservative member. I would suggest February 1, 2023, to give staff a bit of breathing room.
In a nutshell, I would keep the first paragraph of the member's motion, but remove two parts: “or sent to” and “regarding Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), including related to the internal investigation into the matter,”. Why? Because the internal investigation is entirely confidential. We put questions to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and his deputy ministers, but we won't get a response because the investigation is confidential. It's in the hands of the RCMP.
I think removing those two portions of the paragraph may give the motion a bit more credibility, instead of the committee asking for information it may or may not get.
In addition, I would propose a deadline of 45 days, instead of 30. In the second paragraph of Mr. Richards' motion, I would put “within 45 days”, which would give the department until February 1, 2023.
Lastly, I would remove the third and fourth paragraphs of the motion. Why? Perhaps it's naive, but something seems wrong to me. It doesn't quite make sense that an agent or case manager who wrote incorrect information in their notes and then deleted it would make a note somewhere that they deleted the information. I really don't agree with the third and fourth paragraphs of the motion because they are based on an assumption that doesn't make sense.
Let's be honest. Like anyone, a public servant wants to cover themselves, but they wouldn't destroy their notes. They would keep them in case a problem came up later and they needed to justify their actions. Getting rid of information is a pretty serious thing, and I don't really think that happens in the public service, including in this situation. Again, I may be naive, here, but we would have to go through a ton of boxes and redacted documents.
I'll summarize my amendment. I propose keeping the first and second paragraphs of Mr. Richards' motion, with the couple of minor changes I mentioned, and removing the third and fourth paragraphs.
Again, if we really had evidence to back up a request for more information from the department, I would be all for it. However, we are talking about four cases that are hard to prove, even though we shouldn't disregard them.
That's what I'm proposing in my amendment. We will also have a very simple motion to put forward.