Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Winnipeg North, because I only touched on that briefly.
The power to compel testimony is germane to the issue we have had unfolding over the past year and a half, and that is the robocall scandal we talked about. There were a lot of people who refused to talk to the commissioner on investigative powers because they did not really have to. They were not compelled to testify. They may have known something. I do not think it was just because they were nervous. Obviously, they felt that there was something there that they did not want to talk about that made them nervous, and therefore, it should have been explored.
We had people from the Competition Bureau as witnesses, in particular the person who has the power to compel testimony by applying to a judge. I asked that person point blank in committee, “Do you use this?” Without hesitation, he said, “Absolutely. We use it all the time. It is necessary to enforce the regulations contained within the Competition Act”.
That is the Competition Act. This is the Canada Elections Act, which is connected directly to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms under section 3.