Thank you, Chair.
We're back again and the filibuster continues. We have this amendment in front of us for consideration, and having just heard Mr. Angus' comments with respect to the important work that our committee has done to this point and the important work we had planned to do, it is unfortunate that we find ourselves in this situation having burned the equivalent of 20 meetings in the fall, and now we're into a burn of the twilight of this committee in this session of Parliament. It's important that we do get work done.
A lot of it depends on operating in good faith. The motion to call more witnesses when we were hearing witness testimony, hearing survivors' testimony, was not consistent with the agreement or the understanding that we had, and was certainly disruptive in that meeting. It didn't speak to a willingness to move forward in a collaborative way.
We've seen this pattern at other committees and at committees chaired by Liberals. When there are problematic issues, the committees just don't meet. The defence committee is dealing with sexual misconduct in the military, and the chair has cancelled the meetings for this week.
We need to make sure that we don't get locked into a filibuster and lose all of the work that we've done.
Mr. Dong spoke about the compromises or the progress the committee was able to make earlier in the year, and we have heard testimony following those votes.
It's important that we're able to move forward. Mr. Angus talked about my comments last week about potentially calling witnesses whose testimony could be included in our study on conflicts of interest in pandemic spending on the WE scandal.
I'm a pragmatic guy. I'm prepared to move forward, but we would need a commitment in an open meeting by members on the government side that they're going to commit to a timetable to conclude a report on that study. That's how we do that. We're going to have to make our commitments in open session in these meetings so that everyone knows where they stand.
This motion that we have in front of us I support in its original form. We have an amendment put forward by Mr. Fergus and if this is an overture to end the filibuster, I would offer a compromise on the compromise. I would be prepared to vote on it.
I would move a subamendment, Chair, that the third point in the amendment be deleted. I'd like to speak to that.