Thank you.
First of all, Mr. Tilson, thank you for the intervention. You're quite right; the chair doesn't decide what we do, the committee does. And the committee in fact sustained the ruling of the chair that we deal with this matter. We gave notice of the meeting because today's meeting had no business that we could transact with regard to the privacy.
Now, with regard to the witnesses, I believe, if you check the meeting, both the clerks here gave response to queries by Mr. Hiebert and by I think one other member about the witness situation. Responses were given fully by them with regard to that.
At our meeting, the meeting that Mr. Hiebert was unable to attend, we went through the lists that I had circulated to members. The members requested that we hear from the corrections people. That was the area. That was the last time, to my recollection, the committee had that before them. This is in accordance with our standard practice, which is that members are entitled to suggest possible witnesses, with rationalization or justification, for the committee to consider.
So it is the committee itself as a whole, not the chair, that will agree upon the work plan or additional witnesses. You're absolutely right there. We haven't done that because we have not had that discussion.
Today at this meeting there were no witnesses. They were supposed to be here; we had tried. Then the commissioner was to be here, but the commissioner is not available. We have motions from members. We dealt with Mr. Martin's motion on the recall of Mr. Mulroney. There was a second item on the agenda of that meeting, but because that particular meeting took the entire time, we didn't have an opportunity to complete the work of that day.
So as the chair, without any privacy work scheduled for today, I put out notice of this meeting that we would resume the committee business that was outstanding from a prior meeting, which was in fact properly given notice. It was ruled on. It is in order.
I'm now going to go to debate.
Mr. Hubbard, please....
Order.