Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am trying to make sense of why members of this committee are trying to bring a motion on a study that we all agreed on. The importance of it is clear to everyone. I personally was the one who brought it up during the ArriveCAN study. I asked the Dalian president what kind of value their contract added to the indigenous community, how many employees they had who were indigenous and how they had built....
This study is very close to my heart and our team's. I think that a motion like this, coming out of this study and this committee, will actually do a lot of damage to that great work. I'm really looking forward to the report and some of the recommendations coming out of the report. I think this is going to do damage to it.
There are many unknown factors. What we know right now is that there is a media report. There is a claim that the minister had talked about the link to lineage under two different indigenous groups. He talked about his interpretation, and he has apologized.
Now, also, on the company that he partly owned, my understanding is that he had divested long before and was not on the list, as you heard today. There was no contract awarded. I'm not sure whether there was any contract requested, or there was no contract awarded. There was no set-aside.
When I look at this motion, I say, “Well, the way that we are asking that the minister step down and then report that to the House is almost....” If I want to be really partisan and if I want to draw a parallel, I can say, “Hey look—do you know what?—the leader of official opposition has refused repeatedly to get security clearance and to go and get the briefing that's needed.” I see claims come back that say, openly, that these are the members of Parliament who are on the list.
Is it now fair and is it the right thing—not only fair but the right thing—to say, “Well, you know, let's pass a motion that the leader of the official opposition should step down because he's refusing to get the security clearance and then go and report it to the House”?
I think we should forgo this motion. I'll be voting against it.
Thank you.