You told me that.
So I say in this particular instance that the reference to the joint committee be taken out completely, that we don't meet with them, and that we do meet, but we call John Manley and all the members of the independent panel as well as the Ministers of National Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation, adding further witnesses—I have to emphasize “adding further witnesses”—to provide their perspective on this report.
Now, let me say this, Mr. Patry, and to my colleagues on the other side. We are studying Afghanistan. The defence committee was not, but we are. It's part of the report on our side here. So it is important for us to get that perspective in there, both from the ministers and.... It seems to me a little thin that throughout last year, when Mr. Patry was the vice-chair, if I'm not mistaken, they kept saying they wanted ministers, they wanted to hear....
Now we have an opportunity here. It does not matter whether you agree or you disagree with the Manley report or what the report recommends or what it does. But it provides us with the opportunity to ask questions of everyone and to get a broader perspective on it. I am more interested that if we are going to put an Afghanistan report out there that it listen to everyone. If I recall correctly, Mr. Dewar was a little upset when he did not get his NGOs to talk about Burma because they did not think the Burma report was a complete report.
Using the same argument, we imply over here that we listen to everyone, the ministers and everything. So I am asking that this motion be amended following this and that the foreign affairs committee call Mr. Manley as part of our report, to be involved in our report.
