Maybe I'm guilty of acting in good faith. When dealing with a Liberal, that's probably never a good idea, especially with a Liberal chair.
When you look at the record beforehand, the discussion beforehand, we were about to have an agreement on a UC motion that was based on a negotiation between me and Mr. Beech that he would do everything possible to get 20 hours of testimony in. I believed him, and maybe I'm a fool for doing it. Then Gabriel Ste-Marie piped up and said, “We want 10 hours before”. You can ask Gabriel. Gabriel didn't say, “We only need 10 hours.” He wanted 10 hours before the end of the week.
We could end this discussion and this impasse right now. We still have lots of time in the session to get the budget passed. I know that's the goal on the Liberal side. Push it back by a couple of days to get some testimony. I hate to do this to the clerks, but they are amazingly talented at getting witnesses done up. We could have had witnesses today, but instead you're stubborn and you won't move forward with us collaboratively, despite our knowing the context of this entire discussion. All Conservatives are asking for is 10 hours of additional testimony, which could have been done. We could have had that today. The clerks have proven that they are miracle workers, and I appreciate everything they do. We could have done the 10 hours of testimony today. We could have done it yesterday. We could have done it Tuesday, and there would have been absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I'll carry on with this discussion of my motion. As I said, it's a good-faith effort. We can sit down and we can push it back a couple of days just to get 10 hours of witness testimony.