Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The motion put forward by Mr. Fortin is very straightforward. It is that the committee report to the House that witnesses did not appear, witnesses ordered by the House of Commons to appear at this committee. Those witnesses, Rick Theis, Amitpal Singh and Ben Chin, by order of the House were to appear at this committee or to have the Prime Minister appear in their place. There is also an order for the production of documents from PCO in the form of a due diligence report ordered by this committee.
This, of course, relates to the committee study on pandemic spending and conflicts of interest. We began the pursuit of this study in October of last year. We are now at a point where we're dealing with a motion to simply report to the House that the witnesses were not released, because the committee did not release the witnesses, that we note that the witnesses were absent, and that we note that individuals, ministers of the government, did write to this committee and then make their letters public, and that they had instructed the witnesses not to appear.
Those are facts. This motion gives us the opportunity to report this to the House, and then the House will deal with it. The committee will move on to deal with what it's going to deal with.
I've said before and I'll say again that after so many months of dealing with this issue, the committee ought to conclude this study and report to the House. If we dispense with this motion that is based on facts and then let the House deal with that, then we can address the study that we have undertaken over the last several months. Final documents are in translation. Then we can conclude that study.
I would note that on the business calendar for the House of Commons, we have, I think, 13 days of time scheduled for this committee before the end of the session. That leaves us with quite a challenge, when we look at the number of things that members of this committee have asked to study and also the obligations that the committee has with respect to the commissioners who would come before the committee on estimates, and studies that the committee has agreed to undertake, including that on facial recognition. As well, we have an open study on the protection of privacy with respect to MindGeek and Pornhub.
We have a number of things for this committee to do. This motion is very straightforward. We've talked about it at length. It's frustrating that we're at a point now where, after it took months for us to even get the motion passed to begin this study, we're now going to, on the tail end, not be able to conclude that study. Not only that, but the committee won't even report to the House that the witnesses who were ordered to appear didn't appear.
That's frustrating. It's dysfunction. Now it's time to complete our work. This motion is very straightforward. I will be supporting this motion. It's Friday afternoon. It's 2:30 eastern time. The committee is supposed to be done at three o'clock. We addressed business that was to be addressed in camera. Now, we have half an hour. We have a full speakers list.
I would be very interested in hearing from speakers from other parties whether they would be willing to move to a vote on this motion so that we could then give instructions to our Library of Parliament analysts, so that we could conclude our study into conflict of interest with respect to pandemic spending. While we wait, we could give them provisional instructions, interim instructions, wait to receive the rest of the documents from translation that we're expecting, and then be able to conclude that study without hearing from further witnesses.
We have an opportunity here. We're at a bit of a crossroads. Members from the government side, the Liberals, have an opportunity today to say, let's vote on this thing and let the House deal with it. Then we can give instructions to the analysts instead of just filibustering, running the clock, and then, when people run up against other commitments, having to adjourn the meeting and pick up the filibuster on Monday morning instead of doing many of the other important things the committee could be doing.
Chair, I'd ask if you could canvass members of the committee, perhaps informally, to see if there's any interest in concluding discussion on this today. If there is, when those folks speak, they could make their points in a succinct fashion and we could bring this matter to a vote.
I would note, Chair, that this motion has been debated at multiple meetings since the start of this month. We'll be moving into a new month next week. It would be great if we could put this to rest.