You currently stated, Mr. Chairman, that, in committee, anything was possible as long as it is legal. Now, games are being played, and I must admit that I don't have a great deal of talent in that field. People are acting like clowns and are introducing one amendment or subamendment after another.
Furthermore, in the last amendment submitted by the Conservatives, clearly to filibuster, we find the words "in camera", "confidential" and "secret". From a government that claims to be transparent and to be applying the Accountability Act, it sounds like dirty words, if I may say so.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Tilson criticized you earlier for having called witnesses this morning. You will get no criticism from me. The motion I introduced was passed by the majority. According to that motion, the committee should immediately consider this issue. That is what you are doing and you have done it well. I thought that this morning was already a little too late, but I may be in a bigger hurry than the others.
Furthermore, when the steering committee met, the majority agreed on the report. Once again, you did a good job. The secrecy, the in camera meetings, the confidential information and the kind of filibustering that we are seeing now from the Conservative members are quite typical of a government that has things to hide. This kind of situation always leads us to discover major scandals.
I am not going to draw a parallel with other scandals: I think that the members of this old Conservative government know what I'm talking about. I am saying "old Conservative government" not only because it's been in power for more than a year and a half—and I think that it's starting to be quite a long time—but also because it's old in terms of its behaviour and the way it wants to hide information from the public. This is unacceptable.
Mr. Chairman, we are here in the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. It's quite ironic to see that Mr. Van Kesteren's amendment goes against access to information and the disclosure of information, and asks for in camera meetings and for some information to be kept secret. I too am going to start to use big words: it's unacceptable; it's censorship.
For all those reasons, Mr. Chairman, I will be voting against this amendment and I would like to do so as soon as possible so that we can hear from the witnesses who are here in this room. They're waiting to testify. We have invited them. This was a decision made by the majority here, in the committee, and the steering committee. If the Conservative members are serious, they will stop playing games. Then we can invite our witnesses to testify.