Mr. Chair, I would say to my colleague that we've said many times that the federal government will never have a stranglehold on Quebec's natural resources. It's not up to the federal government to manage Quebec's natural resources; it's up to the Government of Quebec. We've said that many times. We'll have that debate after.
I was saying that we had proposed a motion to the Conservatives with some meat and bones to it; then we had radio silence. No one from the Conservative Party answered us. We can't negotiate parliamentary procedures on something. We can't do that. We can't put forward a motion on something and say that if someone votes against this, it's because they're lazy or on vacation. What a silly way to do things! Yet that's what we saw this summer.
When you think about it, the Endangered or Vulnerable Species Act is under the Department of the Environment. So the motion shouldn't go to the Department of Natural Resources. It should go to the Department of the Environment.
My colleague Monique Pauzé proposed a motion to Mr. Deltell in early August, but it fell on deaf ears. There was no response from him. I don't know if, as the Conservative leader said, Mr. Deltell was on vacation at the time. I also don't know if he was lazy for not answering us, to use the same epithet the Conservative leader employs for us. I don't mean to impugn his motives. The fact remains that, in this matter, until we were able to negotiate with the Liberal Party to have today's meeting, which seems very important to us, we never got an answer. So for all those reasons—
I totally understand my colleague's request for an amendment to refer to the 2,000 jobs; that's legitimate, but we will have the opportunity to debate that and make those demonstrations during the committee's study. If he wants to add the reference to the 2,000 jobs, we have absolutely no problem with that. However, I'm asking the Conservatives to stop playing partisan games, stop using points of order to get sound bites, so that we can focus on what we need to do, which is to learn about the problems and listen to the people in the forestry sector.