Thank you, Chair.
First and foremost, I want to express my gratitude to Mr. Villemure. He and I served on the Winnipeg labs ad hoc committee, did the important work and spent many, many hours together in a room. Ultimately we're trying to make sure the processes that happen are as open and transparent as possible.
I do tend to agree with some of the things Mr. Green has said with respect to duplicating work in various committees in order to have theatre and so on. While I do realize that important consideration must be given to some of the issues Mr. Villemure has raised, at the same time I don't think it's appropriate for the Canada-China committee to have a study and then for our ethics committee to have substantially the same study. Chair, as you would know, we can only move amendments that make little changes and not substantially change the report or what is being asked with the study.
The Canada-China committee is studying this. In fact, there is a difference of only three witnesses between their witness list and ours. I propose that those three witnesses go on and testify at the Canada-China committee and that we then come back and look at their study once it has been concluded. Then we can see where the gaps are.
Right now, I would prefer that we spend more of our time dealing with what Canadians have told us are the substantive issues at hand. I receive emails every single day asking for updates on the social media study that our committee has undertaken, and I would love for that to be prioritized. I would love for us to be more efficient in how we do things in the House. If the Canada-China committee is looking at an issue, perhaps the best thing for us to do, Chair, would be to write to the Canada-China committee and ask whether, while they are talking to exactly the same witnesses we're proposing here minus three, they can also perhaps ask them these questions—we'll send them a list of our questions—instead of our doing it all over again here in the ethics committee. Doing that would make more sense to me. That's just one option.
The other is that we wait until the Canada-China committee study is concluded and then we pick it up. We haven't started the study yet at all. I think it would be best for us to understand the context we're coming from before we start any study here in this committee.
I do prefer option one, in which we send our list of questions to the Canada-China committee and ask whether, while they are at it, they can also look at this angle because they will be dealing with exactly the same witnesses and substantively exactly the same issue. Let's be a little bit more efficient in this regard.
I'll park my comments there, Chair.