Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to make a couple more comments just to be clear about what I mean by some of the things I have said.
First of all, Mr. Chairman, I need to state that while I did not agree with the extended and expanded mandate, or the need for that at the time that this Assembly made that decision, I respect the fact that by the majority decisions of this House, that the committee had the mandate to deal with what it was tasked to do.
I do not believe that I am suggesting, in any way -- I believe this work got to the point through incremental steps by a number of parties, including the Minister, it got to the point where it had to be addressed. I agree with that.
Secondly, the point that I really want to state again is the concept of abuse of power, because I do not think we could really debate the recommendations we have before us unless we accept the power of this committee to make those recommendations.
I had to, for comfort to myself in my decision-making process, figure out what it was, this parliamentary privilege that this power came from that this committee was exercising because if you read the excerpts from Beauchesne's and so on, this committee had enormous power. This committee had a lot of power. This committee could call anybody, anywhere, at any time, to say anything they wanted to know. It is a very wide power. This comes from the parliamentary privilege.
Mr. Chairman, I believe that there is no power that is absolute. No one has absolute power except for the power of God. I think that the second thing that might come close to absolute power is that of sovereign power, but even the kings and queens did not have absolute power. They were routinely beheaded for whatever decisions they made.
Their power came from the people. Things have to make sense in the end. It has to commonsensical. I know that this committee was tasked to take care of that power on behalf of the people and on behalf of me as a legislator. That committee was my committee. So as far as I can see, this parliamentary privilege that this committee got the power from, this power really originates from the people. This is what I was trying to say. Everything has to be connected somehow. We are not a vessel or a floating power in vacuum. We are connected to the people who gave us parliamentary privilege and from that, this committee got enormous power, almost absolute power to look into this question.
So this is why, for the interest of people and the interest of the public, that we examine in discussing the recommendations whether or not the power used was appropriate and whether or not the power used was fair and whether or not the recommendations are connected and it is inherently, internally rational to what they heard and found.
I could also state, Mr. Chairman, that I in fact spent time listening to hours and hours of hearings. I stayed up to one o'clock in the morning to listen to the hearings and I read submissions by lawyers. I have to say there are a lot of situations that were very, very confusing.
I am not implying in any way that the committee has conducted themselves in a way that treated this lightly but I am saying that this is the court of appeal. This Assembly right now is the court of appeal for this committee that we tasked and the Supreme Court of this decision is the people. So in judging the recommendations of the committee, I need to look at all of the facts and circumstances that the committee used to arrive at their decisions and that it is commonsensical.
I should also state, Mr. Chairman, that I agree with some of the recommendations and not others. So I did not want to go to what my position was on any of those recommendations. I am going to make comments on that as the recommendations are dealt with. I do not think that in any way it should be implied that because you are questioning any part of the process or recommendations, that you are condoning any of the activities that a reasonable person knows to be a wrong conduct.
Mr. Chairman, I want to take this opportunity to state that I had a serious problem with this quasi-judicial process. In watching the process, in watching the television, I was very confused at how the process went from legal to non-legal at a moment's notice. At some points, the opinion was sought to the counsel as to the legal position was in this and that. Other times they would say that this is non-quasi and this is a parliamentary committee and we can do whatever power we want.
I accept that this committee had that sort of power but in the end, it has to be answerable to the people. I found that the rules were made along the way, in some cases. Some people had lawyers and some people did not. Some hearings were held in private and some were not. I find it curious that this committee says that the committee's mandate is accountability, openness and transparency of this government and I think that the same should go to the committee as well.
I also agree that we have to come to some sort of closure on this matter. I agree with a great deal of regrets that we have to talk about this in the way that we do. I am just not comfortable at this point in the way that the recommendations and facts were presented, where some of the facts were mentioned and some others were not. There is some reservation on my part as to whether or not this report will be capable of bringing this matter to closure, that it went further than it had to, I think, in some aspects in finding of fact. I think a lot of recommendations there could have been made day one. I look forward to putting my position on where I stand on all of the recommendations. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.