For sure, but to my mind that’s what the classified review bodies are for. I’m not sure how a public inquiry could even be set up to ingest that kind of material for review unless it was all pre-vetted by DOJ.I don’t think reasonable citizens would actually expect to see TS SCI TK/SI/HA material (which I hear tell can be pretty unremarkable ), but the fact that all material must be made available for consideration by vetted parties of an investigative body as representative of those citizens is not an unimportant principle of our society.
For comparison, in a criminal prosecution involving classified material, the provincial court that has to try the facts doesn’t get anything of classified origin until it’s either declassified, or until DOJ has already redacted everything of concern. Before such a case ever hits provincial trial court, any classified redactions will, if necessary, already have been litigated in a closed session of federal court with a security cleared judge and counsel. The AG has absolute override authority to say that certain information will never see the light of day in court, and the most the trial court can do is dismiss charges.
That’s all a tried and tested process for criminal matters- incidentally the case law for that is Ribic, which came from some Serbo-Canadian who was prosecuted for using a CAF officer as a human shield in FRY. The classified material in that case was pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
For a public inquiry? Just figuring out how to intake and pre-vet all that materially in (classified) camera before ever providing what’s left to the public inquiry would be ire the ordeal. It would cause much delay, too.
The benefit of the cleared intelligence review bodies is that they can consider all of it, and then draft reports tailored for both CLASS and UNCLASS release.