In the spirit of a friendly amendment, one thing I would suggest, which I think would only be possible with the unanimous consent of the committee, would be to strike the wording of my original amendment, given the discussion and the advice from the clerk that we've had, and replace it by adding instead, at the end of paragraph (d), “and that the committee express its preference for the minister to appear in person.”
That way there's no question that it could be read in a way that would prevent her from appearing. Otherwise, given the content of the motion that the House has passed for a hybrid Parliament.... I think it would meet the objections of my Liberal colleagues and also allow us to have an important precedent in terms of how Parliament ought to conduct itself in this new space where circumstances are a bit different from what they were were at the beginning of the pandemic. We're still trying to navigate our way through the balance of the pandemic. We're clearly going to learn some things as we go.