Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate that long speech by my friend Mr. Angus. I also appreciate his point of view. Just to put it on the record, I'd like to say that the Liberals are not the only ones talking for a long time. We have had evidence of that before. It seems to me that the NDP and the Conservatives have done it a number of times as well. The only party that hasn't spoken for too long is the Bloc Québécois.
It is a burden that almost all parties bear these days.
It is true that we have spent a lot of time talking during this debate, but we have ended up with the hybrid motion before us. Part of the motion proposed by Mr. Angus has been amended. In my humble opinion, it has been well amended. We will continue to work to review government spending during the pandemic and we will particularly focus our attention on two points in the motion.
Then there was an amendment to this motion, proposed by Ms. Gaudreau, where the issue of WE Charity documents came back on the floor. I must comment on this issue because I feel it's important for those listening to us to know that the committee had previously defeated the motion. That being said, we now have a motion that includes several items that encourage Speakers' Spotlight to submit to us all documents since October 14, 2008.
You have read in the newspapers, as I have, that Speakers' Spotlight stated that almost everyone who pays taxes has kept records going back only a certain amount of time. In fact, Speakers' Spotlight can confirm only that it has all records for the past seven years. So that takes us back to 2013. Before that year, it cannot guarantee that it will be able to provide the committee with all the documents, just as Canadians are required to keep tax returns and all related documents for at least seven years.
By the way, let me add that, this past weekend, my wife and I went down to the basement to empty some boxes, as we do from time to time, to reduce the amount of stuff in the house. We came across a box full of papers. They were tax returns from 2002 and 2003. I can assure you, our tax returns are very simple. You can confirm it with—