Mr. Speaker, this is of course a very serious topic. This is not the first time this issue pertaining to the documents related to Afghanistan has been raised in the House. It has been raised seriously and conscientiously by a members of a number of different political parties. It is extremely important that the Chair treat this matter with the gravity it deserves, and we are confident that will be the case. However, it is also very important that the government treat it seriously as well.
The government's behaviour today in bringing these documents, whatever they may be, to the House in the condition that it has is really a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. The government wants to appear to be doing something to leave the impression that it is being transparent with respect to the Afghan documents when in fact transparency is the least description one could use to characterize what has gone on here.
When the House opened at 10 o'clock, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader was in his place and put before the House two large cardboard boxes. He said that those boxes contained documents pertaining to the motion passed by the House last December, related to Afghanistan. He indicated that they were not translated and accordingly he had to seek unanimous consent for those documents to be put forward. The House gave unanimous consent, as a courtesy, because there is importance attached to any documentation related to Afghanistan. However, here we have 2,500 documents, we are told, one copy of each, we are told, not translated and still apparently in redacted form. That is, and Mr. Speaker I think you will have to agree, highly unusual. It may in fact be unprecedented in parliamentary experience.
The government has known about Parliament's requirement for documentation since at least December 10. Indeed, an argument could be made that the requirement for those documents was known even before the date upon which Parliament passed the resolution. However, the government has known that Parliament requires these documents. Now, more than three and a half months later, it comes to the House with one copy, untranslated, of 2,500 pieces of paper.
One might ask, in this massive exercise of recalibration that apparently went on in the government after prorogation, did it disconnect all the photocopying machines in the Government of Canada? What has it been doing, with respect to this documentation issue, for the last three and a half months, that it comes to the House in such an unprepared way?
For now, tabling, under the rules of the House, has not actually been effective. The government will try to make the argument that it has had a little exercise in transparency here today by bringing in these documents and dumping them on the table, in two cardboard boxes, but that is not effective tabling under the rules. Substantively, tabling has not been perfected. What we have had is a show, a charade, but it is not legitimate.
I would call upon the Chair to note for the record that while the tabling of these documents may have begun in this chaotic and ad hoc way today, it is not yet complete and these documents should be deemed not yet to have been tabled, unless and until all the documents, whatever they may be, are available to all parties, in both official languages, as required under the rules.
The attempt at tabling that was undertaken today has obviously been far from perfect. It does not meet any of the transparency or information requirements of members of Parliament. The government needs, PDQ, to get on with the job of producing those documents, as Parliament has requested, in a very legitimate way. The obfuscation on the part of the government simply only serves to raise greater suspicions in the minds of members of Parliament and the Canadian public.