That's fine.
I will just pull back into my main point before I digressed into the details. It was that I myself as an MP had grave concern about what was about to happen at the cocktail party last night. So I would have been very tempted today to drop a motion on the table to say that we should be having a serious look at this, because this is a flagrant overstepping of the law when it comes to election financing. But I controlled myself and instead I said no, what is the focus of this committee? Is it to be chasing after these matters now when we have important legislation on the table? Or is it to actually do the work of the committee?
It is to do the work of the committee. I was just giving an example that all members have this tug at their heartstrings to move off the priorities of the committee and step into other areas, and yet we all must show--I'm just saying, Chair--some self-restraint.
In fact, there's a lot of noise there, and I know people are interested in what I'm saying, and if they showed some self-restraint, they'd be able to hear me. I'm really glad they have earpieces. Thank you.
I'm just saying that it's showing some of this self-restraint. I did that in the best interests of the committee. I think that as MPs we can all do that, and so this is another reason that accentuates why I defined the motion in the way in which I did.
The other thing I would like to comment on is this. I'm actually surprised that Ms. Redman's motion got as much air time as it did and that the committee report got as much air time as it did, because I was reading through some documentation concerning earlier meetings. This committee met in September. It met outside of the normal sitting time for committees, and there was an argument put forward, I believe, by my colleague Mr. Reid, and he was quoting from Marleau and Montpetit. In that argument of his, he was talking particularly to Madam Redman's motion about pursuing the election financing.
One of the things he was bringing out was actually from Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, the sixth edition, page 153, citation 505. It says:
Members are expected to refrain from discussing matters that are before the courts or tribunals which are courts of record. The purpose of this sub judice convention is to protect the parties in a case awaiting or undergoing trial and persons who stand to be affected by the outcome of a judicial inquiry.
It was a fairly pertinent point and I think it was well received, certainly by the chair, but by the committee members, and so I must admit, as I was doing my research, it did surprise me that the committee had moved away from legislation like Bill C-6, as I'm proposing in my motion, and was stumbling into this overgrown field of launching investigations when in fact the matter is indeed before the courts. I think the opposition agrees with me. I don't hear any rebuttal against that. I'm assuming they agree in that regard, Chair.
There are some other points I'd like to bring out regarding the importance of Bill C-6. One of the things is that there was a comment made, again, when the committee was convened during the summer, because Bill C-6 came up and it was acknowledged by most members that Bill C-6 was of critical importance. And it was of critical importance because there were byelections coming, but also because of the uncertainty that was shown regarding this matter.
Here we had the House of Commons passing a bill into law, and when they passed it into law, it was interpreted differently by Elections Canada. This, I argue, caused great confusion. It caused great confusion among all parties because we had all parties commenting on this ruling of Elections Canada regarding veiled voters.
I know that the chair ended up, in good conscience, basically trying to address this issue with Mr. Mayrand. He had addressed a letter to you acknowledging receipt of your letter in which you had informed him of a unanimous motion of the committee—