The member for Cambridge is going to rant. That is fine. He can do that. The law clerk gave an opinion to the committee. The Department of Justice lawyers challenged it. They said that there was an override because of sections 37 and 38.16 of the Canada Evidence Act. The member for Scarborough—Rouge River was involved in that to make absolutely sure that it did not override the powers and privileges of Parliament.
It is clear. He gave a second opinion. He said that they never explained. The lawyers from the justice department just said that they rejected the advice of the parliamentary law clerk, the person who had the resources necessary to advise parliamentarians of the legal ramifications of things and our legal rights. The second opinion said that he totally dismissed the justice department's assessment of whether the Canada Evidence Act applied here.
The issue is that Parliament has a constitutional right. It is in the rules and privileges. Regarding the issue of this committee, there are tools to have done this. To get it down to its simplest form, one has to go back to the initial documents that the three witnesses had in the second meeting after Richard Colvin was before the committee. They had the documents. They testified there was nothing there that would indicate there was any concern about torture or releasing detainees where there was a concern of torture occurring.
If that were the case, why would the government simply not take all reasonable steps to satisfy the committee that this was the case? The government said that it could not give the committee anything in time for these witnesses, so members would to have to go on the fly based on what the witnesses said and not what they knew. The government said that it would have to translate the information, so it would take a bit longer. It said that when it gave it to the committee, there would be a lot of blacked-out pages because it was very sensitive and could be a problem.
That is not the case. The witnesses said it was not the case. The testimony of those witnesses said that there should have been nothing blacked out, but it was. Why? Because the government is covering up. The government is caught and the government will to have to be accountable.
All the government does is throw it back and say that we have no respect for or do not support our military. When people hear that, they know the government is just trying to change the channel. It does not want to be accountable and it does not want to respect the rights and privileges of Parliament.