Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I know that there are lots of people watching with interest who have all types of theories about how these committee dynamics go, some grounded through their experience in watching procedures and others completely disconnected from reality in terms of how they view these things going.
As I've said at other committees, I view the time in my constituency as incredibly valuable to hear from Canadians, to reconnect with the people of Hamilton Centre, to help with casework and to help with my office. Quite frankly, this sordid tale that we've watched unfold over the last three months is an important issue for Canadians. I think anybody watching this committee would agree that the position in the line of questioning I took was to get to the truth. It was to fully understand what's at hand here. I support a further investigation. However, in terms of urgency and importance, I don't think this is so urgent that it needs to be dealt with within 21 days, given the fact that many members of the House have very committed schedules within our communities.
You know, Mr. Chair, I take exception to.... Maybe not “exception”, but I do find it amazing the way that some of my colleagues define “work”. I would put it to you that this is my job. This is a parliamentary job. We do it. I supported this meeting today, because I was very keen to hear testimony from Mr. Anderson and Ms. Poon on their schedule, but our work is back in the constituencies. Our work does involve hearing from residents, having those meetings and being there. We sit a very extended schedule in our regular hours.
For those reasons, Mr. Chair, I think this would be better suited for when we resume. This is not a cover-up. This is not whatever. The point I was trying to make in previous committees was that committees are at the direction of the members. This is why I appreciate Standing Order 106, which requires members to find another partner, another party, to support what they want to do, absent of which, in a minority in particular, we shouldn't just be setting a schedule without the full participation of the committee.
All of that is to say that 21 days is not necessary for me. Given the information that's come out over the last week, I will be very keenly interested to see what comes out over the next three weeks, given the revelations that happened here at committee. I think that would give us a better line of questioning to the minister and allow us to more substantively engage with what's before us today.
So before anybody wants to get all riled up with these pseudo-fake-rage-machine click farms and the degenerate emails that you get from people, threatening you for treason and everything else, just touch grass, people. Touch grass. Realize that we're here. We're sent to do a job. We're going to do the job. We're going to do it on our terms. We're going to get to the bottom of this.
Thank you.