Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'll just finish reading the quote. I think it might help my colleague to understand.
Ministers are answerable to the House of Commons, and our employees are answerable to us.
It's no other than the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper who said that. It's his birthday today. I would like to wish Mr. Harper a happy 62nd birthday.
When we invited the Prime Minister to appear before these committees, we also invited his government, because the Prime Minister speaks on behalf of the government, as do his ministers.
To state in the motion that we are expressing our disappointment seems to me to be completely unacceptable. We need to find a way to withdraw this motion. As I said, there are a number of ways to do that.
Mr. Chair, if you wanted to informally canvass the opinion of the members of the committee, as you have done on a number of occasions, to see if we should proceed to a vote, I would like you to seek an informal indication from our colleagues as to whether they would give their consent to withdraw this motion unanimously. I would be more than willing to give you an opportunity to do that. We could take a short break to do that.