Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
We've been hearing from Liberal members all along that it's something about having the Clerk of the Privy Council before committee. That is obviously not the case.
Their subamendment kills the motion of privilege. The core of the problem is that for a month we've had Liberal members absolutely stonewalling and stopping the work of the finance committee and refusing to proceed to pre-budget hearings. The reason they are doing that isn't because of some differences around witnesses. I don't think there is a single member of the committee who objects to hearing from the Clerk of the Privy Council or the law clerk on this. It's to kill the motion of privilege. This is the core of the issue.
The Speaker, who is elected by all members of Parliament, has the ability to rule on this motion of privilege. All the committee is doing is flagging what is a grave concern. The grave concern is the censorship, substantially, of 1,500 pages of documents. That is what was delivered to the finance committee in response to the motion that I tabled on July 7, which was voted on by the entire committee.
We have substantial censorship and redaction of the documents. The law clerk drew our attention to this immediately. We have a motion of privilege that is a very valid motion, but government members refuse to have this committee rule on that and actually have a vote. Why? What is in the documents that they don't want us to see?
The issue is not, as the government members have tried to put forward, whether or not the Clerk of the Privy Council comes to committee or whether or not the law clerk comes to the committee. The issue is trying to kill a motion of privilege. As you know, Mr. Chair, when a motion of privilege is submitted to the Speaker it has to be in a timely manner.
With the filibuster that the Liberals have undertaken for the last month we can justify not submitting it to the Speaker in a timely manner. For the committee to decide—