Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My thanks to my colleague for his presentation. I will try to be brief, out of respect for the witnesses who should be appearing before us shortly.
That being said, I will have to oppose the omnibus motion before us on this omnibus bill. The main reason is that, once again, as happens almost every year, budget implementation bills are studied in committee before they are even passed in the House. So we may well be doing work for nothing. If the bill is not passed in the House, it will never be referred to the Standing Committee on Finance. In that case, we will have done all this for absolutely nothing. To study the purpose of the bill before the House has even voted on it at second reading is to predict the outcome of a vote. I think it is inappropriate, as a matter of principle, for a committee to predict the outcome of a vote in the House. That is the main reason why I will be opposing the motion.
However, I would now like to propose that items 2 and 7 be extracted from the motion and put to a separate vote. As a result, the members of the committee could first vote on those two items and then on the rest of the motion. This would allow us, at the very least, to express the desire we have on this side of the table to invite the Minister of Finance to appear before the committee. I do not want my vote against this omnibus motion to be seen as a refusal to invite the minister and his officials to appear before us.
Since I would like the minister to appear before the committee, I would like to be able to comment separately on this issue. I therefore propose at this time that items 2 and 7 of the motion be extracted and voted on separately.