Mr. Speaker, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh responded to this earlier and said that in his view, he assumed that somehow all the committee members had just missed the information and that they were sure it had been sent. That was not the case, so it was detrimental reliance, if anything.
There appears to be a systemic problem here, that of the withholding from committees information that they need to be able to do their work. I would have thought that the officials would have come prepared to answer those questions, obvious questions that they have undertaken to provide that information subsequently, such as how many times the faint hope clause has been used in the last ten years. This is so fundamental to the bill and for the consideration of the bill that these are questions that need not be asked; they are automatic.
I would ask the member whether or not he believes that maybe there is little bit more here in terms of possibly a breach of the rules of Parliament with regard to deliberately withholding evidence and information from committees.