Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It is great to be able to speak to this, and I do thank my colleague for his intervention. He was able to share with us a great deal of why we are here and what we are trying to accomplish, and I do thank him for allowing me to speak to it, because he has convinced me wholeheartedly and fully that what he said is correct. It's not often we get the type of intervention here through which we can actually convince each other that where we're headed is right and just.
Mr. Chair, on the original motion by Ms. Redman, my colleague has mentioned for all intents and purposes the use of the word “illegitimate” and the reason for its use. Of course, it could certainly be used simply to fool or to knock out of sight why the words are chosen, but if I remember correctly, Mr. Chair, the original motion was in fact so poorly written you ruled it out of order. It took a majority of this committee to rule you as incorrect, sir, but it was originally even ruled out of order and not accepted by you, as the chair, as being a legitimate motion.
Here we are, back to it, arguing it again--or back to doing that for an amended version of it. The amendment was moved by my colleague to broaden the scope of it, to clean the motion up to where it could be back again and maybe even accepted as being in order. The amendment was moved to include not just one party but also the Liberal Party, and to include 2004 to broaden the scope and the length of time for which this committee would look at election activities, election financing of two parties. That would open it up to the review of the committee so that we would actually spend some time looking not narrowly, not just in an extremely focused manner and not just in a partisan way to make one guy look worse than the other guy. We're really going to open it up so that we can adjust and justly look at the finances, the election spending of the Liberal Party too during that time.
I'm not certain what they feel they have to hide, why they would want to narrowly focus the motion to be on just one small issue, and why Canadians wouldn't want to know the whole facts, all of the facts of at least that period of time, and to include their party.
While my friend was speaking, he also mentioned the other parties in this House, which we may have faulted somehow by moving an amendment that includes only the other, if you will, major party. Again, not to cause duress on the other side, but there are two other parties that sit currently in the House, and they're not mentioned in this motion at all. To be fair to all of them and not just the Liberals, perhaps our amendment should be amended further and we should add a subamendment to include the other major parties. I would suggest that we do that so that after the words “the Liberal Party of Canada” we include the words “and all other political parties” just so that they don't feel left out.
We had a member today who was under some duress because we forgot his party when we were discussing this. I would happily move that subamendment to open this process to all political parties so that we actually look at the financial books of all parties during those two elections and see if we then can satisfy the citizens of Canada that we're not being in any way partisan, so that we're not just picking on them and they're not just picking on us, and so that we're actually opening it to all.