I think Mr. Bergeron will be happy that the government side is supportive of this motion. I think we also had some concerns with the information we were able to get as parliamentarians. We think it's important to get this information, so we're broadly supportive of the motion.
I have a couple of concerns. I'll just speak about the motion, and I'm going to present a very modest amendment to it. I would hope that we don't redo the work that this committee did when it considered Bill C-47 in the last Parliament and made significant amendments to that, which the government accepted from the committee.
To Mr. Morantz, I think that—I haven't ever met you, Marty, good to meet you—when you raised the question of the knowledge that a country might have about exports and whether or not that should deny their being sold, that's critical to the former Bill C-47 and to the arms treaty that we had acceded to, but we've have gone farther in our own legislative requirements. I think that we may want a briefing on those amendments, which were to both the Criminal Code and another bill that I can't remember the full name of. I just don't want to get into that because I think we could spend the whole fall on work that was done last Parliament, so I think we could refer to it.
However, as I said, we are in support of this. Our one concern is the 30-day limit, and I say that not because the government particularly has a concern about it, but because there are over 20 requests now that have been made to the law clerk and parliamentary counsel. I think it could be unreasonable to get a fairly large number of documents, have them translated and have them reviewed by the law clerk so he can confirm all of that. We're not doubting that Parliament has the right to see the documents. We get that, but we just want to make sure that we have enough time for the office to do it. I believe there are only eight people in that office, and there are thousands of pages of documents that other committees have already asked for in the last couple of weeks.
I am going to suggest, Mr. Chair, if it's appropriate, I would amend the motion. It looks like this is all one sentence, so it's hard to say, but the line should say, “related to the granting of any such permits within 60 days of the adoption of this motion”, just to give all of those offices a little more time to do it so we get the work done and done well. That would be the amendment. As I said, as amended, this side of the virtual table would be in support of the motion.