Thanks, Peter.
Obviously you had time to consider this, because that's why you asked to suspend the meeting and then consider it some. I can only assume that the department gave advice on what it thought was reasonable and then you checked in with your colleagues at some point. What you're saying now is that you should have just voted against it when the issue came up when there were more officials here earlier in the day. That's basically what I heard.
Mr. Sorbara, you said that committees are masters of their own domain. We're the masters of our own domain and we can amend the BIA right now. If you'd like to offer a subamendment or another member would like to, if there is concern over this difference between 17 weeks and 12 weeks, we can literally do that right now. If we got a commitment from you that you'd then say yes to the 17 weeks, we could raise it higher just to make sure there's no difference between the two.
I'd like the officials to explain that to us. Would there actually be a difference between the two? You could get a legal opinion from the Department of Justice so that we could then consider it, but to do that at this committee, then, we would have to unanimously approve a delay, like Mr. Julian had asked for earlier today, for the further consideration of clause 470—specific to this one clause—to give ourselves another day so that Department of Justice officials could give us an opinion on whether the 12 weeks would actually interfere with the 17 weeks.
The 17-week maternity benefit, as I talked about with the officials, doesn't apply to fathers. In a situation like mine, I would have gotten no leave, and that just seems patently unfair. For parents who lose a child, the father is just as affected as the mother, but in this scenario what we have before us is that the mother will be covered for 17 weeks, and if the child passes away a day after those 17 weeks, she will not be eligible for any other leave except for the five days—three paid and two unpaid.
What we're proposing to add is 12 weeks. Now, again, if there's a problem with the 12 weeks, we can change it to 17 weeks, or you can go and pass a unanimous motion to delay consideration of clause 470 until tomorrow or another day this week to give the Department of Justice officials time to write up an opinion on whether this would conflict with the labour code and moms would then lose their benefit access to the 17 weeks in such scenarios.
I actually think that's not true. That is very likely untrue. I cannot see a judge ruling like that. I cannot see anybody seeing the facts before them and saying, “No, you should lose access to it” in a particular case. I think it's a disingenuous argument to have delayed it until now and to now say, “this is the problem we have” and to quibble over the 12 weeks.
If that is the issue, then offer a subamendment. Show some goodwill here. We've offered an amendment. Amend it to 17 weeks and we can both agree that we've passed at least one opposition motion today, which hopefully will never benefit anyone in this room—heaven forbid. No one in this room should benefit from it. Hopefully, it will benefit somebody else out there like the people I met last week, the moms and dads who have lost children, and like the ones that Mr. Richards is trying to help with motion 110 at HUMA. That committee can do its work separately from what we're doing.
We can amend the BIA today and report it back to the House of Commons with an amendment that will help fathers and will help parents. That's all it's about.