This is now a back and forth, as opposed to...but that's fine.
Again, I don't know what every other country in the world has done. I would be surprised to hear that you know what every other country in the world has done and how every other country in the world has handled these in terms of requests from parliamentarians. I believe that in most countries they are highly confidential agreements. Again, my understanding, which is the only thing I can look at, is that the Canadians ones have confidentiality agreements. I'd be very surprised if the Canadian ones are that different from the ones signed with most of our allies in most other countries.
If the requirement under that contract is that you need to sign a specific NDA, which is an unusual provision in our contract, but it exists in some cases, then I don't know that following it is such a difficult step. Again, though, I understand the views of the chair and others that it might be something that goes beyond what they want to do. Again, I think it's not unreasonable to propose it as an amendment, because I think that, again, it mitigates risk. I believe this is a good-faith attempt to find a way for everybody to quickly see all the documents in an unredacted way.
If the committee wishes to change the 30-day period to a 15-day period to be the same as Madam Sinclair-Desgagné's motion, I think that would be a perfectly easy and friendly amendment so that there's not delay. If anybody has another suggestion to deal....
I'm going to make one other suggestion, Mr. Chair, because I think that was also Mr. Desjarlais's question. If what is really requested is a legal analysis from the department as to why there's a risk related to seeing these contracts without an NDA, I'm sure we could probably provide something like that, too, but I don't have the ability to do that right now.
In any case, those are the reasons, again, that I proposed what I did. Everybody has a right to say they don't agree, but it was done in good faith.