I'll try to be brief, because I know that this meeting has been going on for some time. However, I did want to address some of the other things that I had heard since I last spoke.

As discussed and responded to by other colleagues, Ms. Gallant questioned the motive behind voting in favour of a unanimous consent motion. If the government had not done something wrong, why would you vote in favour of that? We all voted in favour of it because we all recognized that the content of that motion was appropriate and it delivered a proper response from Parliament.

I know there have been some questions about certain members who weren't in the House during that time, but when you put forward a unanimous consent motion, there's no record of who's in the House and it is understood to be deemed adopted by all members of the House, regardless of their presence in the House. That is exactly what happened with that motion.

Another thing that Ms. Gallant touched on was why Norman was singled out amongst all the various people who had access to the information. Another thing that Ms. Gallant brought up was why there was so much time between the suspension and the charge. I think these are great questions, as well, but they're questions that relate to criminal activity and the best body to assess those is the RCMP. The best body to take the evidence from the RCMP and determine how or if to prosecute is the Public Prosecution Service.

I also heard Ms. Gallant talk about court documents and how they were heavily redacted and how there was a six-month delay. Do we know what the standard is for an ATIP of that size? Do we know if six months is too long or too short? Some people might say it is. Some people might say it's not. More importantly, as I pointed out earlier, it was not the government that redacted the documents. I know that it fits a political narrative to say that, but the truth of the matter is that the documents were redacted by the court and were authorized by the court to be redacted and then turned over.

Regarding the whole issue of code words, I took that to be very interesting because I said earlier that there were no code words that were used according to the chief of the defence staff. Then later Mr. O'Toole said that the chief of the defence staff never said that, but according to an article:

[General] Vance denied the use of codewords in an interview with CBC News in December 2018, when he said he was shocked by the suggestion the military was using them to deliberately withhold documents, and said he would be “disgusted” if it were true. That Dec. 21, 2018 article was entered as an exhibit in court.

Ms. Gallant also brought up issues of new evidence and what other evidence is out there. Again, these are great questions to ask but that investigation should be done by the RCMP—the proper body to be investigating these matters—and then turned over to the PPS.

Mr. O'Toole talked about the Privy Council Office in his comments, and he even said that the PCO sent their concerns to the RCMP and then the RCMP investigated. That's the way the process is supposed to occur. You talk about it as though it is something that should not have happened that way. That's the way the process should occur. If the PCO or any governmental department thinks that something illegal may have happened, their job is to turn that information over to the RCMP so that the RCMP can do that investigation.

I'm really glad that Mr. O'Toole brought up my riding and CFB Kingston. I never miss an opportunity to talk about my riding when it's brought up, so I'm really glad when another member does it. I do care very deeply about CFB Kingston and its members. I grew up in my riding. I've been there for almost 43 years. I've seen it evolve from a town, a community that had a military base on the outside, to a military base that has been infused into the community.

When I was the mayor of Kingston, I had the opportunity to travel to Fort Drum with the mayor of Watertown. Then he would come to Kingston and visit CFB Kingston. He was always so jealous of how CFB Kingston was so intertwined with the community. My children can be coached by a CFB Kingston member and you wouldn't know it, because they're so intertwined and they're part of the community. We're fortunate to have that.

My role here is to decide if what is being proposed today is genuinely in the interest of this committee and if the parliamentary resources to be used for it are appropriate, or if this is politically motivated by the opposition.

Unfortunately, and I keep listening and I keep responding to what I'm hearing, I haven't heard a shred of evidence that confirms the former. All I'm really hearing is hearsay and attempts to suggest that there was some kind of intervention, with no concrete proof that it happened. It's all hearsay, and it's all what people think may have happened based on an assumption. That's leading me to believe that there's not much more to this than the politics surrounding the Conservative narrative on this as of late.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mark Gerretsen

$508,543.00