What I am talking about, Chair, is the work of the committee. The motion I put forward is the work of the committee and how we were getting off base on the work of the committee. That's why I'm bringing it back into moving forward with Bill C-6.
What I'm tying it to is a comment that the opposition is willing to move forward with Bill C-6. I'm saying I don't have a lot of confidence in their intentions and I'm giving an example. This is how it's tying in, because they're saying we should bring this to a vote and we'll get right to it. I'm saying I don't have a lot of confidence because that's not what I have seen.
Instead, what I'm saying is--and this is where it ties in very nicely--we were willing to move without delay on Madam Redman's motion provided the opposition would agree to open their books so we're looking at all parties at the same time when it comes to election financing. As Mr. Lukiwski pointed out, we have all followed the same practices.
Rather than forcing a delay in the business of the committee, if we want to deal with this quickly, let's find some common ground. Let's find some unanimity among the different parties. If this is really a priority issue for the opposition, let's all open our books, let's conduct the study they feel is necessary to conduct for all parties and let's get on with it, do it quickly, get it out of the way, so we can get back to legislation like Bill C-6. This is where I'm tying back in.
That's not what we saw. Instead we saw an intransigence on the part of the opposition MPs in that they simply would not budge from their motion. They will not entertain amendments. They will not entertain friendly amendments. These are friendly amendments. To open all books is a friendly amendment if I ever saw one. Yet I feel, Chair, they turned hostile to that friendly amendment. A hand was offered in friendship, and they bit the hand. It does make one hesitate to offer an olive branch a second time, but I think we would be willing to do so.
I'm making this point again. We need to move ahead with committee business. This is what I am proposing in this motion I have put forward. I think we probably could have accomplished both the study and moving ahead with the legislation if only we could have found some unanimity among the parties instead of this blockheadedness regarding being able to amend their motion so we could look at all parties' books. I think as soon as we open all the books we'll see there is no issue here. The actual time we “would have spent”--it's conditional, “would have spent”--conducting this study would not have been needed.
I did diverge a little to explain the importance of moving ahead with committee business and why I think we could have accomplished both, but let me focus on Bill C-6.
I was talking about different stakeholders, the people who have a valid concern with Elections Canada's interpretation, which has resulted in a solution, Bill C-6, and why we need to move on this, because there are many stakeholders. Many groups have a role to play. They are influenced and affected negatively, I would argue, by the issue, particularly if it remains unaddressed.
Here's something interesting. This was reported in the Montreal Gazette in October 2007. It says: “Most of the Muslim community say so as well. They didn't ask for the ruling that the chief electoral officer made. Nobody had asked for the right to vote with their faces covered. It was a unilateral decision on the part of the chief electoral officer.”
In a sense, I think it shows that there is a widespread understanding, or disagreement, or unhappiness with the ruling of Elections Canada, which in fact turns the eyes of Canadians back to Parliament, turns them back to the MPs.
They quite rightly said, “Listen, you just passed a law. It's not been interpreted well, we don't agree with this interpretation, and yet apparently it's in our favour. What are you going to do about it as parliamentarians?”
Now, as parliamentarians, particularly as the government, we said that we would move forward with Bill C-6. So we worked with opposition parties to do that. We tabled Bill C-6 in the House. It went through first and second reading. So there was debate on this. Different parties commented and had thoughtful comments to make.
They took part in the process in the House to improve the bill. However, we know that an important stage in the life of a bill is its study in committee. Suddenly, all the work stops and Bill C-6 stays there.
It's not front and centre right now. I'm trying to move it front and centre, but it is not front centre right now. This is a matter of concern, because we may have a general election coming up. We definitely will have byelections coming up. So the same concerns that were enunciated last summer during the previous byelections would logically apply to the byelections coming up, because nothing has changed. Bill C-6 has not been passed into law. It hasn't even made it through this committee yet. So fundamentally, there has been no change to the situation that existed last summer. The very concerns that I heard from MPs and from the Liberal opposition party--