Absolutely, Madam Speaker. I believe I can demonstrate that my comments are in fact germane and pertinent to the motion to refer.
I was speaking of the rights of committees to access information they need to do their job properly, which is exactly the point my colleague from Windsor—Tecumseh is making. I ask for the support of other members of Parliament not on the merits of Bill C-36 but on the merits that committee members need the facts in order to make determinations and carry out due diligence to the work that is put in front of them. I was giving an example of where we in committee were denied that systematically.
My point was that members had better think twice before they try to do away with section 745 of the Criminal Code, the faint hope clause, because the punishment for deliberately destroying documents or deliberately denying the existence of them under the Access to Information Act is right up there in the Criminal Code with high crimes and misdemeanours, including treason. It is on par with treason because it sabotages and undermines democracy, and takes away from the very spirit of the public's right to know. We cannot do our jobs without that freedom of information as committee members.
That is the worrisome pattern that I am trying to illustrate. The deliberate withholding of information that was directly relevant to the determination of Bill C-36 undermined the rights of my colleagues on the justice committee in their ability to do their job properly.
Some committee members who spoke I believe were generous in their portrayal of what happened, saying that the minister simply forgot to pass the information that was requested on to committee member. I do not think that was any accident.
I think perhaps the minister is on fairly weak ground, that his arguments do not have a great deal of substance for the need to change the faint hope clause. I believe the actual experience, the empirical evidence that was asked for and that he withheld, would have done great damage to the arguments of members on the government side as to why they thought they needed to make these changes in the criminal justice system at this point in time.
Again, I do not speak to the merits of Bill C-36. That is not why I asked for an opportunity to speak today. I am speaking, as a vice-chair of a parliamentary committee, on behalf of the rights of committee members to function. When committee members ask for certain information and that information is made available to them by witnesses, the minister does not have any right to intercept that information and have it sit for days, weeks or months on his desk while the committee members struggle with only half of the information.
I am not a lawyer, but if we were in a court situation, that is one of the fundamental underpinnings of our legal system: full disclosure of the facts. The prayer we say every day when Parliament opens is that we have the ability to make good law. We cannot make good law without access to the facts.
If one side is withholding pertinent information for political purposes, that sabotages and undermines the democratic process. It is an affront to democracy and to Parliament. The collective privileges of the members of Parliament in that committee have surely been breached at the very least.
Madam Speaker, how much time do I have left? None.