Mr. Chair, following up on the excellent questions of my learned colleague, the member forDurham, I wanted to get a bit further into this oral report that the minister received from his department that has allowed him to come to the conclusion that there is nothing to see here and everything went fine.
I would like to take the minister through some specific things that happened in the hearings that have transpired since November 23 of last year. Predominantly, this is about the fact that the documents were being sought so the defence could put together an abuse-of-process motion to have the charge dismissed because, the defence said, there was political interference and obstruction of the subpoena requests for documents.
With respect to the hearing, between December 12 and December 18, it was said that emails between a Crown prosecutor and legal counsel in the Privy Council Office, which is the government department that supports the Prime Minister, showed the Privy Council Office lawyer asking for updates on who had been identified as potential witnesses, what was discussed in judicial pretrial meetings and what the defence planned to argue in pretrial motions. Does this concern the minister with respect to administration of justice in his department?