Thank you.
Mr. Leitão is new to Parliament, so I congratulate him on his skill as a filibusterer.
We have witnessed something I have never seen before. We are about 102 minutes into this meeting, wherein Liberal government members are filibustering their own bill. I don't think I've ever seen before a government trying to prevent its own clauses in its own bill from coming to a vote. We're on clause 2. We're 100 minutes into this meeting, and we're on clause 2. I've never seen that before.
It's disappointing, because this is a bill that does contain some important measures that we, as an opposition party, had agreed with, had voted for and allowed to come to this committee to be studied, and it has been studied. We came prepared today to engage in a clause-by-clause review with an aim to move this bill along.
If this amendment is an amendment that the Liberals can't even handle allowing to come to a vote.... There are a number of other amendments ahead of us today, and I don't want to see the business of this committee derailed because we are waiting to start an important study on money laundering.
As a path forward, if these Liberals are going to spend all day filibustering an amendment to lower taxes further for Canadians in order to make life more affordable for Canadians, I am prepared to—and I would need the unanimous consent of this committee to do so—withdraw this amendment, so that we can move on to the next amendment.
Chair, through you, I will put it to the committee: If that will help us make some progress, allow this committee's scheduled business to continue and get us eventually to our study that we need to begin, I will ask to withdraw this amendment. They don't want the amendment, so I presume they will allow it to be withdrawn. I will ask for the unanimous consent of this committee to withdraw this amendment.