I'll withdraw that comment.
I apologize for also not being present last Thursday. Unfortunately, I was not available last Thursday when the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General appeared. I actually want to thank Mr. Christopherson's colleague, Murray Rankin. I had to get back to my riding to do a town hall with Murray on medical assistance in dying, and because I can't fly, I needed the time to get back. I apologize that I wasn't able to join this committee on Thursday during the minister's presentation and question and answer session. I did have the opportunity to review the transcript and also see the proceedings on CPAC while it was proceeding.
This matter has been before this particular committee now for five meetings, since the matter was referred to PROC. We've heard not only from the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, but also from the acting clerk and the law clerk and parliamentary counsel. I haven't seen any evidence to date to suggest that there was a premature disclosure of the actual bill in advance of its going before the House of Commons.
That's exactly the point I'm getting to, Mr. Richards. The only person who knows for a fact whether they had the content of the bill is the reporter from The Globe and Mail, Laura Stone, whom you haven't chosen to call, for whatever reason. She would, in fact, have actual knowledge of whether she had the bill or not.
As I say, we're going about it in a roundabout way to try to get to the question of whether the bill had been disclosed before it was tabled in the House of Commons, after the bill had been given notice of motion.
I've taken this position from the get-go, that in order for this to be a breach of member privilege, the actual substantive content of the bill had to have been in the possession of somebody not authorized to have it before it was tabled in the House of Commons.
As you heard from the Minister of Justice's testimony, based upon the actual article in The Globe and Mail written by Laura Stone, it could have been an educated guess. In fact, some of the reporting was not necessarily an accurate reflection of the actual contents of the bill. She had indicated that the Department of Justice had followed very strict protocols with respect to the bill, and that from her department, there had been no breach reported.
We have no proof from my perspective to date that there has been a premature disclosure. I find these motions to be something that I can't support at this time.
I also want to raise particularly, as it relates to two of the motions, the ones that are calling for both the presence of the chief of staff to the Prime Minister and the director of communications again, that I strongly object to calling of any staff unless there is direct evidence that they are somehow implicated. They're not the ones, at the end of the day, who should be answerable. It has to be those within the political wing who would be answerable. I feel that those two motions are completely and absolutely inappropriate.
On that basis, I can't support these motions at this time.