Thank you, Chair.
It's really difficult to read through this motion, which I received just a few minutes ago, and try to understand the essence of it and do a fair examination of the wording while listening to my colleagues offering their input and their perspectives on this motion, but I tried to make the best of it.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that I agree with my colleagues, MP Fergus and MP Shanahan, about whether or not our committee has the power to create a special committee. I think MP Angus spoke about it too. I've just heard from the chair that we can offer a recommendation.
Just to be clear, I'm a newish member to all of this. If the clerk can clarify or read out the mandate of this committee again so that we can make an apple-to-apple comparison, if that's not too much trouble, I would like the clerk to remind us—or me, at least—of it and read out the mandate of this committee.
Again, this is a very substantial motion. I would need some time to digest it.
After prorogation, we're still right in the middle of COVID. The motion I'm about to bring forward will suggest that the committee study the implications of the new frontier of digital currency. We've seen that during COVID there has been a lot of increased use of online services in the financial area and in other areas as well. Coming out of COVID, I think that some of those sectors will be ready to thrive, and Canada usually benefits from the advancement of technology. It shows in our GDP that the technology sector has been at the forefront of it.
I think it's quite urgent to study something that connects not only to Canadians' daily lives and their consumption behaviours, but to international trade as well. We can't lose out. It's highly competitive, and we need to get in front of it in making sure that the privacy of Canadians and Canadian businesses is protected, meanwhile maintaining transparency in these transactions. Because COVID has exposed the priority of those areas, I think our committee owes it to Canadians to start doing some investigations on them, or to at least hear about from witnesses coming from these industries, to provide strong recommendations to the House.
I just need a bit more time to go through this motion to examine it again. At the same time, I hope the clerk can clarify the mandate of the committee with us so that we can compare apples to apples.
Thank you, Chair.