Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to be relatively brief even though the cameras are on.
We are now entering almost our third year in this committee. It had been my hope, for those of you who have joined subsequently, that we would report before Rouleau finished his report. You realize how naive my wishes were, but I viewed the work of this committee as rather limited and, indeed, you could argue whether or not this committee should have been formed at all, but that's another matter worthy of debate.
We are not an ongoing commentary of all of the actions taking place in other streams. Rouleau had his mandate. We've now had one trial division judge. We still have a class action suit. Are we just going to continue to sit and to pick out parts of whatever legal processes might be in place to reinforce our biases or our views? I don't think we're going to change views in our discussion, frankly. They haven't changed in two years, so I don't think that's going to come.
I think we really have to figure out: Do we want to finish or not? I oppose the motion before us because, frankly, it's a motion purporting to bring conclusion but will ensure conclusion never takes place. I would rather see us go forward in the spirit of what member of Parliament Romanado has suggested: to open it up, yes, for some additional witnesses, but we were so close to finishing our report and making our contribution, which isn't the last word, by any means.
On the issue of translation, I'm not sure I agree with my Senate colleague, as much as I respect him, that it is a constitutional right to have every document of every commission translated. The Privy Council Office has said that the actions of Rouleau in terms of translation were compliant with the Official Languages Act. That's our obligation to ensure. If there are other legal processes that will define whether or not that is adequate, God bless, go forward, but I think it's a tactical manoeuvre to prevent us from concluding.
We have Rouleau's report—900 pages. Are we really thinking that waiting four more years to have more translation will change anybody's mind or even be read? I don't think so.
I would urge colleagues to put aside the processes we've put forward to kind of pretend as though we're wanting to move forward when we're ragging the puck, and to get more ambitious about concluding this committee, so that before we rise in the summer we've made our contribution, because I think that if we adopt this motion, you can guarantee that we'll be meeting until the end of this Parliament.