Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the brief presentation by my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent, and I share some of his concerns, especially about government accountability.
If we do not have all the relevant information, it is impossible for us to act as the watchdog we are meant to be and properly represent our constituents. The democratic process is based on the information we have at our disposal. How can people get a sense of the process of deliberation that happens and the issues we deal with here if they do not have all the information?
Personally, I think we have been going off on a rather strange tangent for the past few months. I will give three examples.
The first is CanSinoBIO. In committee, we questioned the government's decision, but the government hid behind its notorious COVID-19 vaccine task force, whose members, it said, had made that decision. It was almost impossible to find out more because the government claimed that the information contained personal information. However, after a bit of teeth pulling, we finally learned that the task force had never recommended that the government proceed with CanSinoBIO.
I do not believe that privacy and national security are adequate excuses for shirking one's responsibilities, and yet, it certainly seems as though this government is using privacy and national security to renege on its obligation to be transparent.
My second example is that of General Vance and my third is the WE Charity scandal. We had difficulty obtaining pertinent information to get a clear picture and, above all, to take a position on these issues. I believe that there is no democracy without transparency.
I would like to raise another rather important point. I am under the impression that, to paralyze the opposition, the government has adopted this approach of ensuring that the opposition does not have the information it asks for. However, the motions we vote on and the debates we have cannot be ignored because they bring the government face-to-face with its turpitude. I believe that is what we are seeing today.
I need to keep up with my colleague, so in closing, I want to point out another major problem. The Minister of Health sent this whole matter to the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians. However, this committee does not have a representative from my party at this time. I do not know why it is taking so long for a member of the Bloc Québécois to be appointed to the committee. I do not know whether this is typical of the Liberals, but, at the very least, it is yet more evidence that this government's track record on transparency could be better.