Thank you.
I appreciate the walking and chewing gum part; I think it is something we can do. I acknowledge, again, the importance that we duly passed a motion at this committee, and with full support.
I have zero interest in moving the goalposts. I have zero interest in sending back another motion to reframe how we're going to receive information. I've heard people talking about artificial intelligence for translation. I would put it to you that there are probably platforms you can use to sort your information in whatever way possible. There are certainly ways to transfer PDFs to Word documents online. However, with due respect, I will not be supporting, and I'll share this now, sending back a motion that will force a re-sorting of the information that we just received.
At this point, I am satisfied that we are receiving the information. It's certainly not in due time, as has been reported, but we do have staff and we do have responsibilities within our own office to sort information and deal with it in whatever way we see fit. My concern is that if we get it chronologically, someone else will say alphabetically, and then it will be by theme and so on. I think it's responsible for us to receive the information and within our own office, within our own party resources, organize that information in whatever way we see possible.
I just want to get right out in front and say that I will not be supporting any motions to send this information back to be re-sorted, only for it to come back at a later date. I would like to get an understanding from those in the room of how they see these next few weeks going, leading into June, and how they see the best use of our time. Hopefully, we can revisit the previous stage we were at in the draft document writing phase, again, setting aside the mandate of this committee.
We fought for this mandate. I'm sure you can go back to Hansard on it. We are masters of our own domain and running parallel to Rouleau. That was certainly our position before. I fought alongside my opposition colleagues to move forward and not wait for the Rouleau commission. Some of you may recall—I'm not trying to impugn anybody—that the government side had the early suggestion that we should either wrap things up before the Rouleau commission or wait. We're not mandated to be a book report club on the Rouleau commission. That was never part of our mandate. We received a year and a half of testimony, direct testimony at our committee, from witnesses we called. The Rouleau commission did a separate track with a separate mandate.
While I do think the information is germane, I don't think it will provide me, anyway, a basis to materially depart from my previous positions. I'm satisfied with the testimony we got. I'm satisfied with a report that I think will not be unanimous. I've begun working on my own supplementary, whether it's dissenting or not, based on my experience. I don't think that's going to change. I don't think anybody is going to find consensus on this very sensitive topic.
I call on colleagues to find a way to get back to work at this committee so that we're not just waiting in perpetuity.