Okay. The committee has just received the budget bill—just today.
To Mr. Turnbull's point, the government proposed, even before the budget bill had been at this committee, that the committee would, if the preferred timelines were not met, dispose of every aspect of the bill without debate or amendment.
My preference would be, in terms of the operations of this, that the committee not try to adopt a programming motion, that it would just proceed in the usual fashion that committees operate: it invites witnesses, ministers come and present on the bill, witness lists are submitted, and the work of the committee is able to unfold. Yet, this government does persist in wanting to proceed, I think, in a way that undermines the effective functioning of our democratic institutions.
There was a lot of discussion today about trust in institutions and about potential threats to democracy. In that context, I think it's important to just reflect on the responsibility of democratic institutions to try to be trustworthy, to earn the trust of the public by being transparent, by operating in ways that allow proper public scrutiny, questioning and proper democratic debate. I would think that Canadians, who are just reflecting on how much trust they should or should not have in our democratic institutions, if they were to turn on CPAC to watch a committee, and they were to see that questions were being called and voted on not only without debate, but without those questions even being read, I think they would see that as a problem.
I hate to prevail on Mr. Chambers again after how well he's done tonight, but I do wonder if he would put some water in my glass at this point.