Senator Gold: Yesterday afternoon, the Governor General of Canada signed an order putting an end to the public order emergency that had been declared on February 14. By signing this order, the Governor General was acting in accordance with the Emergencies Act, which states that the public order emergency ends as soon as the government makes the decision and the order is signed by the Governor General.

[English]

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question, senator. Notwithstanding the revocation of the state of emergency, the Emergencies Act still provides that the parliamentary review committee shall be established. Indeed, it requires that the committee report back to both houses of Parliament, within seven sitting days. It is the intention of the government, as it has been for some days now, to move with as much dispatch as possible for that committee to be established.

Honourable senators may already know, if you are following Twitter, that there have been proposals already made public by both the Conservative Party of Canada and by the government for how this committee would be established — or rather, proposals for what the committee would look like in terms of the number of senators and the number of members of the house. My understanding is that discussions continue to be underway with the House leader in the other place and his counterparts in all other opposition parties to seek a consensus to move forward as quickly as possible. I am intimately involved on an hourly basis to be kept aware of that.

With regard to the first part of your question, I think it’s important to understand that the committee will clearly have access and the ability to seek all the information it deems relevant, subject, of course, to whatever legal requirements or legal limitations there may be on the information that can be shared even to that committee, as I explained at some length and on some occasions the other day.