Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Congratulations on your role as chair today.
If I may, I want to briefly add my own thoughts to what Ms. Bendayan said.
After Monday's meeting and on seeing the resignation of the chair, I thought, “Oh, wow”, but he was clear that it had nothing to do with what took place at this committee. I know he's very committed to the work we've done and to continuing work that he cares deeply about. It's been a pleasure to work with him. We won't have a chance formally to see him at the committee before he leaves if he's not able to be here today, but who knows? Maybe we'll call him as a witness one day and get him to report on whatever his new role is. I want to join my voice to those thanking Mr. Spengemann for his work here.
We're having a discussion about an adjournment motion that we put forward. The context of that was very simply that this committee has multiple studies going on that respond to emergent, urgent, time-sensitive issues going on in the world right now. We're concurrently working on a study on vaccine equity and COVAX, a study on Taiwan and, of course, a study with respect to the invasion of Ukraine by the Putin regime. In the midst of that ongoing work, a motion was put forward by a Liberal member that said we should prescribe a certain number of meetings to a new study on the issue of abortion abroad, with a clear implication that this study would include a discussion of what's happening in the United States as well as other countries.
This is in a context that I think members know. There seems to be a strategy among Liberal members and some NDP members, across a broad range of committees, to try to reopen the abortion debate and have a discussion about abortion. This is not just at one committee, but at many committees. There have been motions with respect to it at three or four committees, and I think it's likely that there's a political strategy here whereby the government wants to reopen the abortion debate in as many committees as possible because it has decided that it's in its political interest to do so.
As part of that context, as we know, I read a quotation from the former minister of justice and attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould. She was explicit about saying that there was a tactic on the part of the government to try to look for opportunities to reopen the abortion debate because it believes this is in its political interest. My humble encouragement to this committee is—