I'm rather in favour of referring these motions to the steering committee for its consideration. That body could then look at the motions and recommend if some should be brought back before the full committee. We could consider Mr. Obhrai's motions, in particular. At least six of the eight, or five of the seven motions do not deal with urgent matters, but rather topics that we will be examining in the course of our larger study. Normally, the steering committee could have decided that the motion on the Arctic would be integrated when this matter came up for discussion. However, this does not preclude the possibility of other motions or urgent matters.
For instance, the conflict in Sri Lanka is an urgent matter. We could decide to hold one or two meetings to discuss the situation. We're trying to decide how the committee will proceed. If we are confronted with a stack of motions every week, then we will spend all of our time dealing with them and we won't be doing any in-depth studies. However, we could agree to send the motion to the steering committee for further consideration of how it ties in with our larger study. If the motion does not tie in, then it can be referred back to the full committee for debate. This approach would help us filter out a number of issues.
The Arctic is already one of the topics on our agenda, along with the United States and Africa. There are two motions pertaining to international cooperation. The steering committee could also look at whether international cooperation should be part of our study and if so, when it should be on the table for discussion. I'm not sure if we need to move a motion, but in any case, I think we should refer these motions to the steering committee and await its recommendation to the full committee. That way, we will potentially be saving the full committee many hours of fruitless additional debate.