Not to worry, Madam Jennings, I'll be happy to answer on the record what you just asked.
You know, each of those motions we have debated, each of those motions that have been brought forward has been about bringing legislation forward. I ask, through you, Chair, to the person who just asked me the question—I'm sure it wasn't rhetorical. The answer was, and has been all along, in each case we've put forward a motion to please, please, get back to legislation, to quit talking about a simple partisan piece. We have even tried, in our own good way, to modify even that motion, which we don't believe we should be talking about, to an open and honest and transparent motion that would include all of us. If we're going to go down that road...and you know what? After we have dealt with Bill C-6, if we have to get there, great, fantastic, let's get there, but let's get there in a non-partisan, open, transparent way where we look at the books of all the parties.
Chair, through you, that's what we've been doing here, and I'm sorry if we have interrupted the partisan path they want to take. I apologize. That's not what we've been trying to do. It's not about them. It's about the legislation before us. We came here today, as I said, in a perfectly good compromise situation with a motion to deal with the legislation before this committee and asked very early in this meeting—hours ago, it seems—to vote on it. Let's talk about that piece of legislation.
As I said, Chair, through the quirks of a 106(4), it wasn't really even to talk about the legislation, it was to talk about talking about the legislation. It was to talk about setting a budget, calling a witness list, and doing the things that are needed to bring Bill C-6 before this committee.
The hoops we have...a guy my size, if you can imagine, jumping through hoops, but the hoops we have to jump through to get to where we want to deal with legislation at this committee...it's becoming infamous. It's just crazy. We're having to deal with this in the minutiae of bringing this legislation forward when the opposite side wants to stop every time we get to the edge, near to the point where we might actually deal with the legislation again, where it just might happen that we actually start doing the work of the people of this country. We amend a motion. We move another motion. We bring another 106(4). Something else is going to happen.
Chair, we've got meetings twice a week with this committee, and what do we ask? What's next? What's happening at the next meeting? I know what I'd like to do. I'd like to sit here and look down at those chairs and see the Chief Electoral Officer and perhaps some representatives from some of the...maybe even the Muslim communities, because that would be good, and some of the people who have written us letters about what would work and what wouldn't work in changing Bill C-6, and some of the people who have to do with election laws in this country. I'd like to ask them questions about how we can move this piece of legislation forward, ask Mr. Mayrand sitting right there in that chair—and probably Ms. Davidson would be with him because she usually is—what trouble they are having with voter ID, what trouble they are having with this piece of legislation. Why can't we move it forward?
I would suspect—I know the members opposite ask fantastic questions when we do this too. Usually, they do a great job in talking to witnesses, and in very, very short order we could write that piece of legislation. We could get to a clause-by-clause situation on Bill C-6 and have a real, true finish to Bill C-6, a piece that, as Mr. Dewar mentioned earlier today, Chair, for you started as Bill C-31, started as another piece of legislation. We could truly get to that point—when we actually are working, getting questions asked and answered as to what the difference is. I don't think we're far, Chair. In reviewing some of the pieces on Bill C-6, I don't think we're but one or two questions away from Mr. Mayrand's answers, what he would like to see different in Bill C-6 to what we have. I don't think we're far, and you know what, the government side doesn't tend to get to go first in most of that questioning, so it might even be found through a question of the opposition, should they be in their chairs during that questioning, Chair. We might get to the answer very early in the first meeting we could have on Bill C-6.
Now, there are other witnesses, and I know they must have put some thought into it, because it was on the orders of the day today that we would also talk about the budget and the witness list for Bill C-6. So I know they must have thought about it, or at least had their staff thinking about who we could get, who else we need to see to complete the act concerning visual identification of voters. Who else do we need to see, Chair?
I'd much rather be sitting here having a good friendly debate and a laugh or two with Mr. Proulx or Mr. Guimond about that, about who we should have. That's what this committee used to do. We honestly used to sit here and talk about what we were going to do next and get to the point of getting the witnesses here with a little good cajoling and “Here's my witness list and here's yours”, and we'd actually come up, at the end of the day—