Thanks, Chair.
I just want to highlight that the motion I put forward is meant to focus the committee on the work at hand, which is finalizing our report. As I mentioned, I think this is the underlying desire of all MPs around this table. It is not a partisan motion. It throws no rocks. It's simply a motion trying to focus this committee on the work at hand, which is finalizing the report. I want to make that clear, because in the debate we've had so far, it sounded somehow as if it was more than that, and it's not more than that.
The other thing is that I understand what Mr. Storseth is saying about MPs having the right to table motions at any time. They can continue to table motions. I am only suggesting that we defer their debate. I am not suggesting we overrule their debate or not allow their debate; I'm only suggesting that we delay the debate until we're done the report.
I think this is quite reasonable. We do this at committee and with witnesses all the time. Often we have motions sitting on the agenda, Chair, and we don't discuss them. Why? We have witnesses in front of us. We'll go through a whole meeting with two sets of witnesses, give them one hour each, and never quite get around to the motions. We are de facto agreeing to delay debate on those motions, and this will happen time and again.
In fact, one of my criticisms of the way we work is that we often don't leave enough time for the committee to do its work. The committee has to do work that is outside of listening to witnesses. I'm saying that in the normal course of the work of our committee, we willingly delay debate on motions. We do it all the time to listen to witnesses, to move ahead with our report, to collect information, to do all sorts of things; now, when I put forward a motion that simply puts into writing what we've already done throughout this last year, it's somehow an affront to the opposition. It just doesn't make any sense.
What does make sense is focusing ourselves on the report. If they have motions, let them bring them forward, but let's delay debate. In fact, that's exactly what my motion says: that we call forward no more witnesses. Let's not fill up our schedule with more witnesses at this point, because we're trying to focus on the work that we've done over the past year, and let's debate no more motions. It doesn't say not to table any more motions or not to give any more notices of motions; it just says not to debate any more motions until the review of our competitiveness report is completed. It's simply asking the committee to delay debate on motions until we've done this more important work of finishing our report.
I think it's quite reasonable, Chair, and I'm appealing to my colleagues to support it so that we can get on with the business at hand and finalize our report.