Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This document raises extremely serious issues and implies that the Constitution Act would have to be amended. It has been written by professionals. I do not know who requested it, but it was probably legislators. I think that we should meet with the authors of this document before voting on any motion whatsoever, so that we know exactly what has to be changed in the bill.
Mr. Chairman, it would be a bad idea to allow ourselves to be rushed into voting today on motions seeking to amend a bill that is contrary to the Canadian Constitution.
In light of the information that we have just received, I think that the motions that we have before us are premature. Before we do anything, before moving on to our clause-by-clause study of the bill, we should seek further explanation about this document in order to understand how the bill affects the constitutional act. I really think that we would have gone too far if we were to end up having to amend the constitutional act. We need to seek further explanation to make sure that we fully understand the bill. Then we can table our motions. I am ready to move ahead quickly, but this matter has to be resolved before we set a deadline for our clause-by-clause study, or indeed before we do anything else. Should we fail to do so, we will, once again, not be doing a thorough job. Once again, they are trying to steamroll us.