Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, because you just proved my point. It's a creative interpretation. The fact remains that if you look at the minutes of that meeting, the second the chair was challenged, a vote was taken. The majority rules. It was over. Then you moved on the vote for the motion. That's true.
That's the same thing as happened today, as soon as we challenged on the witness list. This is just a game that's being played. The bottom line here is that there's no reason why these witnesses shouldn't come before this committee, no justifiable reason, Mr. Chair. If you're in charge and a witness is asked a question that you deem to be out of order, or if a witness goes off in a direction you don't like, isn't going toward whatever mandate you've agreed to follow, then you can shut them down.
At this point in time when you shut down our witness list at this point, I'm just wondering. Do you not see the message that's sending to Canadians, by limiting debate, by consulting with witnesses about which questions can be answered and which questions can't be asked, and then to simply come forward and eliminate not just any witness but every single witness the Conservative Party put forward?
Then of course Madame Jennings tried to soften the potential newspaper print tomorrow by saying, well, let's remove these other folks. Canadians know full well that those folks are being removed for a good reason—Libby Davies—as I've already said.
I don't know whether my argument is going to hold any water whatsoever, because I was very convinced back in April, May, and June that members had clearly made up their minds that there's potentially an election coming in the fall and this is a partisan political photo op, if you want to call it that.
I'm just encouraging members, if there's any possible way we can go back to simply allowing the 11 witnesses that the Conservative Party put forward, and Mr. Martin even suggested, which was quite nice—again trying to soften what's actually happening here—we could add witnesses later. Well, all of us know that's not going to happen. All of us know that whatever motion we put forward will be debated out and then voted down. That's a true story. Again, that's why this should be before the courts. In a courtroom there's a judge who actually knows what he's doing who decides which questions are out of order, and then there are witnesses who can be compelled to respond, and there's some laterality that's allowed.
Anyway, having said that, I don't see the reason these witnesses can't be allowed to testify before this committee with you, Mr. Chair, controlling some of the debate. I think they should be allowed to be here. We don't know what they're going to say; we don't know what they can contribute. I think we should move forward and hear these witnesses. If they decide to go somewhere you don't want them to go, Mr. Chair, shut them down then.