I'm speaking to the subamendment of the original motion, but I have to say that I am unhappy that my initial amendments weren't accepted. I think they presented a good compromise.
This motion as it currently stands is basically an attempt by a committee of parliamentarians to overturn the decision of a medical task force, albeit, as I see it, a very flawed medical task force that I agree came to the wrong decision. I don't think it's the place of a bunch of elected parliamentarians to try to overturn the decision of an expert task force, just as it wouldn't be appropriate for us to tell farmers what kinds of seeds to plant in the fields, to tell roofers what kinds of tiles to put on their roof or to tell airplane pilots how they should be flying their planes.
We ought to recognize that there is a degree of expertise here that we do not have. We're coming off as though we're telling them how they should be doing things, ordering them to basically go back to the starting point and review the basic evidence. We are not better than they are at evaluating the evidence, so I don't like the way this is twisted. I don't think it's appropriate that we're trying to dictate to a group of experts what they should and shouldn't be doing. This just ends up looking like a political exercise.
We all disagree with their conclusion, but the right way to do it would be to strongly recommend that they reconsider. Hopefully, they will. We've already put in process other measures to review this. My understanding is that we've also looked at reviewing the way the panel is formed and the way decisions are made by the task force. The minister has already said he's going to do that.
We would have been a lot better off leaving the original amendment. I think this goes too far. Nowadays everybody is an expert in everything, and everybody is an expert on the evidence. We all have to realize that we as parliamentarians are not experts in everything in life, and I think this has gone too far.