Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, happy summer to everybody. I hope that people have a bit of time for recreation as the summer continues.
I want to thank both opposition parties that have presented motions on this. I will say from the outset that the government side, the Liberal members, will be supporting having the special hearing or hearings, as decided by the committee, on the decision made by the government to grant a permit to ship and return the repaired turbines, which are being repaired in Montreal by Siemens, to Germany to ensure that it has energy security through the fall, especially as the weather changes.
My understanding is that this decision was not taken lightly and was taken with much conversation. I think it would be appropriate for members of Parliament to be briefed on how the decision was made and what its implications and ramifications are.
I begin by stating that we are in agreement with this. We think it's an appropriate use of parliamentary resources, including our human resources as parliamentarians. We think it is appropriate for government officials, particularly the ministers responsible for making this decision, to be called upon to appear before the committee to explain it. We think it is all appropriate and that the Canadian public, through us, has absolutely both the right and responsibility to hear this.
With respect to the motion that's on the floor, I'm going to suggest a few amendments that I think we could use to promote the work.
First of all, as I said, I think the motion is appropriate. However, I have a concern that five meetings are not needed for this process. I think there are two different issues at stake. One is a review of our sanctions. Particularly in this case the sanctions are unprecedented. Some 1,400—the last number I had was 1,400; it may be 1,500 now—have been levelled against the Putin regime, the Belarusian regime and others in support of the illegal war and invasion against Ukraine. I think it's absolutely appropriate that we do a review of that. There will be a statutory review required shortly with respect to the sanctions regime itself. As you know, we have regimes under three different pieces of legislation.
I think those two activities—a review of the effectiveness of our current sanctions, which are being done in concert with our allies around the world and on a personal level, is an appropriate piece of work to be doing, as is the requirement we will face fairly shortly to do a statutory review of the sanction regimes and the three pieces of legislation that we deal with in that regard.
However, with respect to the decision of the government to issue a permit to allow for time-limited return of repaired turbines to Germany to allow it to have energy, I don't think we need to have five meetings. Therefore, I would first move, that, after the semicolon in Ms. McPherson's motion, we strike the line “that this study consists of no fewer than 5 meetings” and allow that to be determined at a later date. We would have one meeting with the ministers, as requested, but then we'd determine whether we need more meetings in the future.
I hope we can get to that point. It's the summer, not that this should affect us completely, but I think we can get the points we need made as to why exactly the government made this decision and what its ramifications are from one—
