Mr. Chairman, I'm very disappointed that the Conservatives have tried to change the agenda. It has often been said, every time Mr. Fast brought the issue back, that we hadn't done our homework. Mr. Laframboise said that Canada Post and the remailers' representatives should come back before the committee comes to a decision.
There is no rationale for changing the agenda without respect for committee procedure and committee members, who have clearly indicated they need more information and wish to ask more questions before making the decision.
To have the agenda thrown aside, as the Conservatives have done today, doesn't augur well, quite frankly, Mr. Chair, for future committee work. If that's the attitude this government is going to take towards members of the opposition who are simply trying to do their due diligence, it really speaks to how little respect and what little regard this government has for other members of the committee. We'll see how that plays out in the future.
Here we have, very clearly, a motion that was drafted prior to a court decision that came down yesterday, which I don't believe any members of the Conservative government have actually read, that has an impact on the decisions we make today. We haven't done the due diligence. We haven't invited witnesses to come back before the committee to look at the implications of this motion.
I know that Mr. Volpe is trying to be helpful with his amendments, but we don't know what the implications are. And now we're going to try to race forward and ram this through without any due regard for what the implication is for universal postal service and for postal service in rural areas.
If members of the Conservative Party are ready to sacrifice their own constituents, without understanding the implications of their gesture, that's their decision. I do not believe that this is a helpful precedent at all. I think, Mr. Chair, that this turns the committee from one in which we've had, up until now, a relationship of cooperation, generally, to one in which we will have a relationship of confrontation. If the Conservatives want to change how this committee works, they're going to have to understand that there are consequences that come from changing how the committee works.
This is completely unacceptable, Mr. Chair. It is irresponsible, I believe. The requests from Mr. Laframboise and me have been modest but important and responsible. For the Conservatives on this committee to simply sweep that aside is signalling what I fear is going to be a real degradation in the working relationships we have around this table.