Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I certainly want to echo the comments of my colleague Mr. Lake. This is unconscionable. Oftentimes we look back at the history of Canada and we understand how we got here as the great nation that we are.
I also understand that there are people out there who continuously, as in the Ukraine, want to fight and die for their own democracy, with the Russians at the gate of exactly their border at the current time, with a miserable 400 Canadians moving westward and not protecting them. I think this is a travesty.
You know, I had great hope for this committee—I spoke to my other two doctor colleagues here—and really wanted to do some work in this committee. You know what? I know that Dr. Hanley and Dr. Powlowski feel the exact same way. That's not to disrespect any of the other colleagues, but I've had specific conversations with these two colleagues.
I do believe there's an expectation that Canadians want us to get something done here. I think this continuous back-and-forth bickering and pandering and ridiculousness we're experiencing at the current time are utterly untenable in the goings-on of this committee. How can we ever expect to get anything done when all we want to do is fight over the rules?
We know that we have committee rules. I know that I haven't been here very long, but there are committee rules that have existed—you can look them up in Bosc and Gagnon or wherever you want to look them up—for many, many years. That tradition is the tradition that I speak of. I don't speak of the tradition of the 43rd Parliament. If someone wants to go out there and fiddle and, as I said previously, gerrymander things, that's totally up to them. They can do that. However, when we have four different people here on our side of the House, and this is a decision that we want to make just simply because people were here previously and that's what they used to do.... Does that make it right? No. I think we have an opportunity here to make things right.
I also believe very clearly that if you want to take this to the extreme, you know, we could have had a majority government sitting over here as Conservatives, and certainly talking about any of this foolishness would have been out the window. So trying to say what happened in the 43rd Parliament is not of any benefit to me whatsoever.
Again, I implore this committee to get some work done. Stop talking about the minutiae of foolishness. Understand that we have a long-standing tradition of the Westminster style of government. It's why we're all here celebrating 70 years of the Queen at the throne and continuing on with those great traditions that have made us a great nation.
In order to continue to sit here, I think it's important that we ask for unanimous consent from Mr. Davies to withdraw his motion to think that there can be equal numbers of witnesses, and that we get to the traditions that we're all here to represent, as Mr. Lake quite eloquently pointed out.
Continuing to do this, if we choose to speak on this motion for hours and hours, is perfectly fine by me. I don't have an issue with that, because you know what? I have also chosen to serve this country. I spent nine years of my life in the military, four years of those in active service and four months of those in the Middle East serving our country in Operation Determination. When you look at those things, for those of us who have decided to wear the uniform—which, yes, is a choice—I think to come here and misrepresent those values, which we all want to push forward, is an absolute travesty.
Mr. Chair, allowing this kind of talk to continue is just unfathomable to me. I have to say, as Mr. Lake said, that the choice here to look at the things that have been done previously, and then have to go back and represent them to your riding, is something that is unconscionable to me as well, sir. If that's the debate that we want to continue to have today and not get any work done, I say let's have at 'er, as we might say, coming from eastern Canada.
That being said, I vehemently oppose and I ask my learned colleague Mr. Davies to withdraw his amendment...and we ask for unanimous consent. Let's get some work done.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.