Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to say a few things and if I get to the end of this, perhaps we can retest Sophie's idea, but I do want to say just a few things first. I do acknowledge that there is a planning meeting on Tuesday. I want us to get to a place where everyone is in a good situation so we can go into that hoping to improve that situation.
Let me just say a few things. I've had various conversations with our own members and with opposition members from all parties. The default filibuster obstruction stance of the Pierre Poilievre version of the Conservatives is actively and obviously hurting the work of this committee. This motion is a direct result of that.
Even members of the Conservative Party, I think, admit that we've seen an escalation of obstruction under the new Leader of the Opposition. It's plain to see. It's evidenced by—and I'm not going to go into all of it, because I already gave a 20-minute speech on that—the unwillingness, on multiple occasions, to negotiate in good faith, the desire to obstruct the work of the committee and the will of the majority of the committee, as well as the actions that have played out over the last number of months.
Negotiations with the Bloc and NDP always go reasonably well. They never go perfectly. There's miscommunication. There's back and forth, but it would be exceptionally rare that, once those discussions have happened and there was an agreement, the positions would change. It took less than an hour to find a consensus between government members and the opposition members outside of the Conservatives once everyone put all their concerns on the table, whereas the Conservatives spent weeks specifically making sure we would never agree on terms.
Jas himself has stated multiple times that it's been only one filibuster and we shouldn't set this precedent. I can already think of three times there have been filibusters since Jas has been the critic. There might be more that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head. There's no doubt it's been worse under this leadership. That evidence could be gathered and would be indisputable by any objective measure.
The fact that the vice-chair has caused some of these issues or has contributed to them and isn't necessarily aware of all the impacts of them or of how many times this has happened is kind of the point of Mr. Blaikie's motion. While I was initially surprised by the motion, I, upon reflection, do understand where it's coming from.
I would also suggest to my colleague Mr. Hallan, who, I believe, is actually a reasonable person and who, I believe, wants to work hard for his constituents, that there are a number of ways in which he could demonstrate and that the Conservative Party could demonstrate they are willing to engage this committee in a professional way that would allow the committee to do its work while not giving up the ability to play a strong role as the critic for the official opposition.
I think finding a way to get dates scheduled for meetings on the pre-budget consultations would be a good step. I think assuring that travel actually happens, even though it's been cancelled for the last two years, would be a good step. I think providing real terms for working on the fall economic statement and the budget—important fiscal documents—would be a good step. I think all of us could agree. The start of this meeting is proof that we need to spend less time debating the work we're going to do and how we're going to do it and instead spend more time actually doing the work.
Daniel said that a few times, and I think that sentiment is shared by all of us at some level. Listen, I know that there are things that are outside of our members' control. There are discussions and decisions that happen outside of this committee, whether they be based in the Standing Orders, in the chamber itself or in whips' offices or the House leaders' offices, but certainly the Conservative leader's office shouldn't have to be consulted for every single decision on every single negotiation. We should be able to have a responsible discussion because, after all, this is an independent committee of MPs or it's supposed to be.
As members of Parliament—and I truly believe this—we have a duty to work together on legislation to make it better.
There is good work that could be done here. Some of that good work was actually already happening today with regard to the mortgage study. By continuously filibustering legislation for no purpose other than to obstruct it, you actually hurt constituents. You hurt the legislation. You hurt the country, and you hurt our ability to do more studies like the one we're discussing today.
The BIA would have been better if you had contributed your ideas. If you choose not to participate, that's fine, but you should allow the other opposition parties to contribute and debate their ideas as well. The quality of the decisions made at this table and in Parliament is directly correlated to the quality of the debate, and you do everyone a disservice by choosing not to engage in that debate. You do damage to our democracy by taking that right away from other members around this table.
I've served on many committees before the finance committee, and I've been happy to work with members to incorporate amendments from all parties, including the Conservatives, the Bloc, the NDP and the Green Party, and I was happy to incorporate those amendments into legislation drafted by the government, because they were good amendments and they were good ideas.
Last I will say that I think there is a path forward, a positive path that can lead to a better place for all members of this committee, no matter which side of the House they sit on, but I also note that I'm not certain at this point that this motion will have a constructive impact on improving our working relationship, especially given the fact that I'm not sure how blame should be distributed among individual members of the committee versus being assigned to the actual leader of the Conservative Party.
I would also note that we have witnesses here for a study we all agreed to spend the day working on. I was not willing to support unanimous consent for them to be removed, because I still feel as though we could get back to that work today.
I know there are members around the table. I was hoping to adjourn debate on this and go back to the witness study, to be honest, with everybody here. I still support doing that, but I do not want to take away the right of my colleagues to say what they want to say about this motion.
I'll put on the record that I'm in favour of adjourning debate on this and going back to the mortgage study today, but I want to make sure everybody has the time to say their piece, as I've had my time to say my piece.
Thank you.