Chair, through you to whoever cares, could the steering committee actually have met and not discussed legislation? Chair, I just can't believe that the steering committee could actually have met and not said at some point.... I recognize that it may have been way down their list, and I recognize that the agenda probably went witch hunt, talk about witch hunt, some more about witch hunt, maybe legislation, and then finish off with witch hunt. But the legislation was still in there.
There's legislation before this committee that needs to be dealt with. I can't imagine the steering committee on scheduling for this committee not talking about legislation at its steering committee meetings. But I get the report, I get the second report--they've obviously met before, because this is the second report--and there's no legislation on here, Chair. There's no legislation. It says, “Your Subcommittee met on Tuesday, January 29, 2008, to consider the business of the Committee and agreed to make the following recommendation”.
So they considered the business of this committee. What is the business of this committee? What's the title of this committee? It is the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Here we are. We're talking about procedure and House affairs. Election financing I don't find anywhere in there, but we'll get there. I'll make this circle.
They're going to consider the business of the committee. So wouldn't legislation come under procedure and House affairs? I would think it might.
There's Bill C-6 on voter identification. There it is. Look, there's a whole bill. It's not very big. In English it's eight pages, eight pages of what we wanted to do to send a message to the Chief Electoral Officer--I thank you for this, Mr. Lukiwski, because I didn't bring my copy of it today--and en français, huit pages.
We're still there.
The answer here is, we didn't. We must have. This committee must have spoken of legislation when it met.
I know that this government is not represented on the steering committee. I'm not sure if I've made that point, but we're not on that committee. You sit there and chair it, so Chair, through you to the other members who might be on the committee.... And I'm not sure I could point them out. They probably should be wearing some sort of identification so they can be blamed. It is the steering committee, so a scarlet S, or an R, for railroad, might work.
However, they met, and we know in our hearts—we can't know for sure because of the in camera nature of the subcommittee—that they must have spoken of legislation. I can't believe that the good men and women of the opposition would only speak of the witch hunt that they're attempting to reach. No, they must have said that there is legislation. But do you know what? They chose not to deal with legislation. A group of men and women on that steering committee chose to deal only with this issue. They wanted it to take priority over the other work of the committee.
This is through you, Chair, to Mr. Lukiwski. He spoke last week about the fact that even on the subject matter they want to bring forward, if it was covered, we could and would say, “Let's look at all of us. Let's open all our books. Let's do this study if it needs to be done.”
I suggest that we deal with the legislation first, because it just makes sense that good legislators would come here and deal with legislation first. But when we're done.... I think we could do it in short order. We could deal with Bill C-6 and some of the other items that are outstanding matters before this committee and then actually get to this, actually get to an element of what this motion says.
But let's at least, then, add fairness to it. Let's at least add some common sense to it. If we're going to look at election financing, let's look at it all. We've said that we would throw open our books. Here they are. There they are, done. Let's all do it. Let's do it all. Let's look at all of them. No, that's not what the steering committee wants. It's not even what the members of the whole committee want. No, they would rather be the schoolyard bullies and say that unless they get their way, they're taking their ball and going home.
It doesn't have anything to do with looking at anybody's books. It only has to do with slinging as much mud as possible.