I understand that, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the clarification.
With respect to the subamendment, I understand that my colleague would like to strike out the third paragraph of the amendment made by Mr. Fergus last Friday. Personally, I have no problem with a report being tabled in the House. There was a vote in the House, and we have an obligation to go back and present a report detailing what happened in committee.
There was an impasse over the wording of the original motion, which referred to dissatisfaction. I'm hearing different opinions this morning. I'm very concerned about what's happening at this committee, where we should be working in good faith. There was even the idea of proposing a timeline. I made that suggestion a few weeks ago when we were trying to get to the conclusion of this study. I was told at the time that we didn't know if it was a good idea, that perhaps we could add more witnesses. This is the tendency of this committee, to go ahead in good faith, to start a study, to hear witnesses and then, all of a sudden, we start adding more and more witnesses.
Let's get back to basics. I have heard my colleagues discuss in the past how to get to this motion. Rightly so, this motion before us is a study that started out very simple, but has grown in scope. Why? Because we have been studying other issues that keep adding up. I have the impression that we have lost the essence of the original motion.
That said, I will reserve my arguments for the resumption of this motion. Let's be clear. In the beginning, there was a contract. It was never executed. That's the bottom line. Who paid the price? The students. All of a sudden, we ended up with a multitude of meetings and a large number of witnesses.
Let's go back to the basis of the subamendment. We have this obligation to report to the House. The issue for my colleague is to be able to change the wording and make it very clear that we aren't hiding anything, that we are very transparent. It says that the named witnesses did not show up. It does say that the non‑appearance of witnesses will be highlighted as an appendix to the main report of the study on conflict of interest and lobbying issues in relation to pandemic spending. It seems to me it's very clear, we're saying exactly what happened. As for the motives, goodness knows we have disposed of them, talked about them, debated them. We are clear, we have nothing to hide, we will state it in writing
Let's be honest. First of all, I don't understand why we're disagreeing about not reporting this. Second, we have a proposal that they want to strike out completely and not talk about. Is it because they want to make a separate motion afterwards? When there is dissatisfaction, we report it to the House. When there is dissatisfaction, we propose something. What do we do? We have a choice: vote for it or vote against it. Dissatisfaction can be expressed by voting against. That is all we have to do.
I'm very comfortable telling the facts. I'm not at all comfortable with striking that and not reporting to the House. I'm very comfortable with the amendment made by my colleague Mr. Fergus.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.