That's not a point of order. That's an item of debate. Gee, the thin distinctions that are being made here. My point is that this Parliament and the Conservatives have supported equality of witnesses before, and in terms of getting over the apparently extraordinarily difficult philosophical problem that Mr. Lake has and the good doctor has with the Westminster system I don't know but the Conservatives did it last time. You know why they did it last time? Let's talk turkey, it was because it was Michelle Rempel Garner's motion, and the motion passed, she accepted some amendments.
That's why it worked. That's why they voted in favour of it, and the Conservatives had no great philosophical or principled reasons to oppose equality of witnesses by parties then. They were very prepared to sacrifice the principles of the Westminster system when it was their own motion. So enough of this principled stuff. What they are doing here is they're threatening to filibuster the health committee and stop the good work of this committee in the time of COVID, in a time when we want to study children's health, in a time when we want to address the terrible burnout of our frontline health care workers.
You've heard it, the Conservatives are saying that they will talk out the clock and filibuster rather than give each party at this committee the same opportunity to put witnesses forward when they have been told repeatedly by people who sat on this committee—Dr. Powlowski, Monsieur Thériault, me—that it worked extraordinarily well and all it did was bring good witnesses before this committee.
The only partisanship that I'm seeing here is Conservatives who don't want to let go of their ability to use their muscle to get Conservative-oriented witnesses before this committee. That's what this is about.
Incidentally, I also want to say that if we're respecting the Westminster system, why did the Conservatives and Mr. Berthold spend all this time trying to get their motion to study children's health first? They don't have the greatest number of seats. The Liberals do. So I guess the Westminster system and the principles of number of seats only works when it benefits the Conservatives and it's easily dispensed with when it doesn't.
So I'll tell you I am not withdrawing this motion, and you know what? I want a vote on this motion. It's going to be the last thing I say on this, because I want to vote so that we can get to the important issues of the day. I'll leave it to the Conservatives to decide if they want to make a political decision to filibuster and waste time and not let the health committee of the House of Commons study these important issues because they don't want to give each party the opportunity to have an equal number of witnesses at this committee.
The delay of this committee is squarely on the Conservatives.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.