Given the committee's decision to vote against the amendment earlier on, I will have to vote against the motion itself. At the same time, I'm prepared to clarify the way the government would be prepared to respond to this committee, based on 300-plus years of parliamentary history, during which time the principle of ministerial responsibility has developed.
The staff members in question here will not be attending but will be represented by their ministers. Of course, ministers are responsible for the actions of their offices and they take responsibility for what happens in their bureau. That is a core principle of parliamentary democracy. As such, ministers will appear if this motion is passed.
So I would advise the committee that they could expect to hear from the Minister of Public Works, Ms. Rona Ambrose, and from the Minister of Human Resources, Ms. Diane Finley. At this time, I think those are the only ministries that are singled out. As such, they would be the ministers who would attend and participate in the hearings and take responsibility for the actions of their staff and their offices.
There are one or two ways we could approach that. We could either amend the motion to reflect it, or the opposition parties can pass the motion as it is and nevertheless have the same result.
In order to align the motion with the reality, I would propose that we amend it to remove the mention of staff members and replace those staff members with the ministers responsible for the offices in which those staff members work.
My proposed amendment would be that after the sentence, “Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development”, you would delete everything and you would replace it with, “and the Minister of Public Works, Honourable Rona Ambrose.”