Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his excellent work previously on the Canada-China committee prior to the leadership transition.
The previous ruling of Speaker Milliken emphasized that Parliament had a right to unfettered access to documents, and also that Parliament was enjoined to exercise that right in a thoughtful and responsible way. In this case, Parliament has exercised its right and has put in place very judicious safeguards. The documents would be handed over to the law clerk and the parliamentary counsel. They could be redacted and then transmitted on to the committee, which would look at them in camera.
However, the critical difference between the government's procedure and our procedure is that in our procedure, it would be employees of Parliament, who understand and respect the privileges of Parliament, who would be making determinations about appropriate redactions rather than the executive having carte blanche to make its own determinations about redactions based on criteria that they are not sharing with us.
It is important to remember that on these issues of national security, the government did not even start invoking national security in its arguments until substantially into the process. At the beginning, the Liberals were not talking about national security; they were talking about privacy. However, when we clearly pointed out that there were exceptions in the Privacy Act that addressed the very issues they were talking about, exceptions in the Privacy Act that talk about the right of lawful authorities to request documents, then they changed tactics. They stopped talking about privacy and started talking about national security. The point is it was an invented excuse part way through.
When we are asking very general questions about whether there are Chinese military-affiliated scientists at Canadian labs, those questions should be answered, if not in public, then certainly in private.