I hear the point, Chair, but I do not accept that it was some kind of secret. As far as I know, you're still in the chair, and as far as I know, Larry Miller's still not here. Unless I'm in some kind of alternate universe, that's the reality in public, and it has nothing to do with what we talked about in camera.
Now, if I may proceed, we can get on with the witnesses. Thank you.
The vice-chair is now in the chair, and the purpose is that it now gives the government de facto majority control. That is not reflective of the House. The Canadian people did not elect a majority Conservative government, and if they wonder what it will look like if they ever do, watch the roughshod that's going on here.
That leads me to my second point, which is also the reason I'm going to vote against this motion. And the government is making sure that we're voting on this first. At the end of this, it says there's a view that we don't need a public inquiry. They say there's no need for a public inquiry because of, what, 50 hours, 878 pages of documentation? Yet not one of them is saying that this meeting shouldn't happen, that somehow this expenditure of time and money and effort is okay. The reason they'll make it okay, Chair, is that by passing this motion ahead of time, no matter what information comes out of the questioning, even if the public concludes by watching that it's obvious we need a public inquiry, the position of the committee will have already been taken. That's going to happen because the government members are going to ram this through using their artificial majority.
My last point is that if we really wanted to have the most productive meeting, then we would have ensured that Ms. Weatherill was here to present her reports, since she's done all that work, and secondly, that the minister was here, since most of the unanswered questions, or many of them, are around the actions of the government, and specifically the minister of the day.
Thank you, Chair.