Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Without wanting to insult the interpreters, I am going to express myself in English Mr. Chairman, so that we can follow each other word for word.
My understanding, Mr. Chair, of the rules and regulations is that there are criteria that must be respected for an item to be made votable. The subcommittee decides on these criteria; therefore, the subcommittee being a subcommittee of this committee, my understanding is that we are also to make our decision according to these five criteria.
As a member, Madame Picard has the option of coming in front of this committee to make her points, to explain to us why she feels her private member's bill should be made votable. On the other hand, we have a situation where members of the subcommittee, because of the in camera situation at the subcommittee, cannot tell us, aside from their report saying we have found this or we have found that.... But we do not benefit from whatever advice, whatever legal advice or whatever, they've had in regard to the respect or non-respect of these criteria.
Therefore, I have difficulty accepting, as Mr. Lukiwski is saying, that we either accept or reject, in the sense that the way Mr. Lukiwski is putting it is it's believe or not believe.
I think we have the opportunity as a committee to hear opinions. Mr. Godin was asking for the opinion of the legal clerk of the House, and I think this would be elementary in the sense that this is the minimum or maybe the maximum that we can ask. But if we are to reject or accept a report from a subcommittee without knowing, without having advice from an expert on the particular point of the criteria that the subcommittee tells us was not respected, we might as well flip a coin.
I think Mr. Godin is on the right track in asking the legal clerk of the House of Commons to tell us his opinion as far as it being acceptable or not, versus the Constitution. Then if we decide to make it votable, fine, it'll go to the House. If it's accepted in the House, it'll go through the committee proceedings, and we'll know more about it.
But the basis of all of this is for us to decide along these same five criteria if it should be votable or not. I don't feel that with the report we got from the subcommittee, and the lack of comments or the lack of advice, we can make the proper decision. Thank you.