Well, I'm going to appeal to members to support the amendment, because I don't think it takes away from the actual motion. In fact, I think what it does do is exactly what the committee wants. Certainly, through you, Mr. Chair, I think it does what Mr. Martin wants. Ultimately these folks have ignored this committee, and Parliament has an additional set of powers and authorities to sanction them.
Now, through you, Mr. Chair, Mr. Martin continues to speak of having to sanction these people. He's insulted. What can the committee do? We're certainly not going to suggest we send Mr. Martin out to swear at these people until they get here. So I think we should ask the committee to invite these witnesses again or summons them again, which is the extent of the committee's authority, and if we have indication that they're not going to honour that, then we should absolutely report that to the House. The House would be sitting by then. We need to report that to the Speaker of the House, and the Speaker of the House can throw another level of sanctions, another level of authority.
I hope I'm not interpreting and I very much respect what Madam Redman said. She's absolutely correct. These folks deserve a second chance; maybe there are legitimate reasons. But I think if we try to summons them again and they don't show up, guess who's delaying the process? It's been indicated that somehow there's this conspiracy, that we don't want to get this done before some election that we all know isn't happening. But if that's the argument, then I think we need to move, and as Madam Redman said, no, this isn't a bad first step, and then this other thing could be the second step.
I think the amendment simply says we're doing steps one and two at the same time. That's absolutely reasonable. Without a report to the House, I see this thing dragging out and dragging out, and I just don't think that is the intention of what we need to do here. We've got formidable business going on. I support the amendment, but unless we're going to report it to the House, it basically falls back to the same kind of authority the committee has, and Mr. Martin yelling at people and cussing at them isn't working. These folks actually are getting scared away, in my opinion, by the behaviour of this committee.
So without reporting to the House, I don't see that we would have the additional authority to seriously sanction, and any suggestion otherwise is absolutely false and misleading. I will not support the motion, because it's impotent. I will support the amended motion, where we actually go to the House of Commons and ask the Speaker of the House to step in and lay the hammer down on these folks, and it's as simple as that.
So without the amendment, I won't support this motion, because it's purposeless. It's a political stunt, chapter 13, and I won't continue to do that. We have work to do here. If you're serious about getting to the truth, then the amendment makes sense because it's the double hammer and it happens all at the same time. It speeds things up; it's exactly what you've been saying you wanted. Let's see whether or not that is true or false.