Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. May covered the history well because this is not a move that we haven't seen before. It was just a different party doing it last time to stop independents and other MPs from moving motions at report stage. You'd wonder why you would even have that stage. I'm curious why the government hasn't gone through the proper procedure, which is to reform the way Parliament works as opposed to this ham-fisted approach and going committee by committee to change this procedure. I'd be curious to hear from the government members the valid reason for doing this, if there is one, because I assume this isn't Mark's authorship. It would be good for this committee to hear about our committee business and not this universal plan that's being promulgated by the Prime Minister's office.
I was looking back, because it's good to look back. There's a 32-point plan issued by Mr. Trudeau called “Real Change” about reforming Parliament and democracy, making committees more independent, and not allowing the Prime Minister's office to dictate what does and doesn't happen. That's a bit rich coming from the House yesterday when we had a motion to end debate not on one but two bills simultaneously. I'm not even sure you guys tried that before. It's an interesting new tactic. The Liberals in the House applauded and laughed at that particular motion, both very important bills, one to the RCMP and one to our budget.
I'm surprised because it doesn't speak to the spirit of what Mr. Trudeau has committed to. On the scale of personal...and I'll end here, Chair, because I assume members of the committee whom I also consider friends didn't put this together themselves but were asked to do it. The language is eerily similar to what's been happening at other committees. A pretty good argument would need to be made that this suddenly spurted from your intelligence and imagination independently and it just happens to have fallen on all 20 committees of Parliament simultaneously. It's a bit much, and it's certainly not in the spirit of what was promised on October 19 last year.