I suspect, based on past precedent, we will go far beyond the amendment as well, Chair, and that may be the source of the confusion from the member opposite.
Chair, Conservatives want to get this complete, and we want to get the contracts. It's a simple proposition. The public is paying for this, and the public should, generally speaking, have access to the contracts.
I hope that the Bloc might reconsider the amendment, because it really vandalizes the whole project, as far as I'm concerned. With a relatively small number of words, it changes the whole meaning of what we're doing here. Instead of asking for the contracts such that we could look at the contracts, understand them and get to the bottom of their implications in the fullest sense, it moves us towards requesting a narrow set of provisions that specifically name certain things that relate to the hiring of foreign workers such as language requirements and language of work.
There may be aspects of these contracts that have an impact on those things but do not, specifically, touch on the criteria that were mentioned. I think that it is reasonable to look at the whole contract to be able to understand what the effects of the contracts are in totality in terms of Canadian workers. That's what we're trying to establish.
We know that this public subsidy is leading to the employment of hundreds, at least, of foreign replacement workers, and getting to the bottom of this requires not just looking at provisions that might specifically mention foreign replacement workers. I'm not an expert in this area like my colleague Mr. Perkins is, but I suspect that they didn't write directly into the contracts the exact number of replacement workers. I suspect that the government, foreseeing this possibility, was cryptic enough in their language or simply didn't insert the necessary protections to ensure that Canadian workers were involved.
It may not be so much a question of what's in the contract but what's not in the contract. We can only establish conclusions based on what's not in the contract if we see the whole contract. If we see the whole contract, then we can say that there's nothing in the contract that provides for X, Y and Z. If we only see part of a contract, we have no way of establishing that. We have no way of establishing what's not in the contract unless we see the whole contract. I think that follows fairly clearly and fairly logically. We have no way of establishing what's not in the contract unless we first see the whole contract so we can identify what's absent. If we only see half of the contract or less, then there may be other things in the contract that you're not seeing. It completely negates and undercuts the entire purpose of this motion.
In fact, on that basis, Chair, I would even want to inquire if this amendment is even in order, because I think there are rules that prohibit negation amendments. I'll leave it to you to rule on whether that is a matter of order in terms of this being effective negation of the intent of the original motion. Whether it is so formally, I certainly think that it is so substantively, and it's certainly not something that we can support. It undermines the whole project that we've spent the day trying to work on, which is trying to understand what's going on here and delivering transparency for taxpayers. It negates and undermines the whole purpose of this exercise.
I may have more to say on this but, for the time being, I'll leave my remarks there. I do hope that some common sense will prevail, at least on the opposition side, and that we'll be able to have a motion. We've already lost some of the provisions, but the main goal is that we need to be able to get the contracts, or there's just no point.
Thank you, Chair.