Madam Speaker, I guess it is no surprise to any of us on this side of the House that a government member would say to give it a rest, let it go, people are sick of this.
The hon. member is really missing the point about why this debate is so important before this matter goes to committee. We understand the committee system and how it works. There are a certain number of members on a committee from the opposition side and obviously a majority from the government side. The procedure to allow this debate to take place exists so members of the House can give input and frame the kind of debate that needs to take place in the committee.
This is not spurious thing. This is not waste of time. The viewers are not sick of this. What they are sick of is the fact that the Liberals, the government in power, are using damage control to get this off the political agenda.
When this goes to committee, it will be vitally important that the committee not only examine the question of conflicting information provided by the minister of defence, but also examine and reveal to parliament and the public the very systems that are in place, which apparently did not work bringing us to this crisis in the first place.
This is not about bringing down the reputation of parliament. In fact, I take great offence to that statement. This is about maintaining the reputation of parliament and ensuring the House and the committee do their work adequately.
Would the hon. member agree that it is very important that the committee not only examine the question the statements from the minister of defence but also examine what other systems failed in this regard so that the Prime Minister was not aware of critical information?
The Deputy Prime Minister said today that we really should not be concerned about this because nothing went wrong as an outcome. That is not the question. Maybe the government was just lucky that nothing went wrong in taking these prisoners.
The question is this. How does the government operate in a crisis like this? If the system does not work, if the minister of defence could not do his job or was not willing to do his job, why did these other procedures not come into play that would have assured us as parliamentarians and the Canadian public that somebody was in control and knew what was going on? That is the question for the committee.
Does the hon. member believe that this is a legitimate question to examine?