Mr. Chair, with the greatest of respect to Ms. Chatel, I am directly on point with debating the subamendment because the subamendment is about requesting that the finance minister appear before this committee.
As part of that debate, we need to be free at this committee to explain why. That's what I'm doing. I'm explaining why it's so important. I will keep explaining why it's so important, notwithstanding any points of order, interruptions or any tactics any of the other members might have to try to muzzle the Minister of Finance from coming to this committee. That's what is happening here, Mr. Chair.
I will wear it as a badge of honour that members of this committee are trying to interrupt me in making this very important, fundamental case to the functioning of democracy in this Parliament, which is that the finance minister appear at this committee to talk about her own budget.
Getting back to my earlier point, that particular budget implementation bill had a provision about the deferred prosecution agreements. From that, a major scandal for this government ensued. The Prime Minister was found to be saying things like the story in The Globe was untrue. Of course, we found out that it was true. We found out that he was in fact pressuring the then-Attorney General to grant his friends at—