Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to reply in terms of some of the comments that were made this morning, and specifically in terms of what has transpired in the past with regard to where we are, or as one colleague mentioned, the chronology of events, but I'm going to stop short and focus on when the motion was voted on by a replacement of a member of the same political stripe as my colleague who sits on this committee.
I'm going to tell you how I see things. It's fine and dandy to accuse and to say that one party is wasting time and does not want to move on, and to allude to the fact that we do not want to work collaboratively. We do, and what I see from my perspective is that a vote was taken, and then a member came back and said it was an error.
I was not satisfied with that explanation. I think we need to respect the outcome of a vote. If we simply are of the opinion that another member of the same political stripe can come back and say, “Look, I would have voted differently” and then, because he doesn't have a chance to go back and reverse the outcome of the vote, he presents an amendment on the exact same paragraphs or writings that we disposed of....
We disposed of them because there was goodwill around the table. Another member had made amendments to the original motion, and I think there was goodwill among the majority of us to be able to move on with this issue. We want to move on with this issue because we heard the message from the Conservatives, loud and clear, that if we do not vote on this, well, we're not going to move on.
Then who is holding us back here? I can tell you from this side of the fence that we want to move on, but I'm afraid, Mr. Chair, that we are heading onto a slippery slope if we are of the opinion that we can vote on a subject matter and then, if we're not satisfied with the outcome of the vote, come back and introduce the exact same wording that we had already decided on.
If that's how we're going to be conducting ourselves in this committee, as a new member of this committee I wonder if we're ever going to be able to get past any motions or do any work. I'm afraid we're setting a precedent and an example that if we do not like the outcome of a vote, it doesn't matter; we can just come back and present the exact same thing, amend it into a motion that we're discussing, and that's that—and up until such time as we do not agree to that, well, I'm sorry, but everything will be stifled. Committee work will not be able to go on. We've heard that loud and clear. Either you do this and we move to a vote—