Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm glad to see that my intervention is stimulating discussion among our peers. I understand and deduce from this that the motion today merits the time it takes to consider the serious repercussions of adopting such a motion.
My preliminary feeling, when this meeting was called this morning, was that we want to ram this through, that it doesn't matter what we think and we are going to vote on this. It doesn't matter what Ms. Lattanzio may or may not think; we are going to vote. If we do not go to a vote today and we stay here later, so be it. If we need to come back next week and keep discussing it, we will.
As I mentioned yesterday, this is not, I would say, a serious breach, but it is a serious consideration that we need to look at. It's a motion whereby we're asking for documents from individuals who are related to an elected official. We're dodging the individual who has the responsibility to do this type of work. Not only that, my understanding is that we will continue to hammer on this issue: It doesn't matter, as long as we get to a vote on this.
Colleagues have made interventions about other motions that could be decided at this particular committee, but they are being sidelined for a question that could be easily considered outside of this committee. We are talking about this going forward and are persisting, regardless of the seriousness of what's being presented and without the opportunity to perhaps get legal opinions as to whether we can even go down this avenue. There's nothing else: We're just going to a vote whether we like it or not, and if we're not ready to vote, well, we'll just keep going.
These reasons and the reasons I mentioned before with regard to bringing up, at various committees, the same issue again and again—and Madame Gaudreau's motion clearly had that intent, with paragraph 11—lead me to conclude that this is where the focus is. The focus is on the Conservatives' pushing an issue through regardless...that we think things through or consider the repercussions of what we are being asked to consider in this motion.
We want to interject and we want to intervene, so, Mr. Chair, through you I ask this: What is the basis for having this motion, the urgency of this motion, and why are we submitting it in this committee if the intent is to present it in other committees?