That's fine, but I'm not going to allow a vote at this point when I'm still fighting to win, because right now I'm going to lose. As soon as I stop talking, I'll lose, so I have to keep talking.
I'll end this part of it by saying again that's the kind of message Canadians want to see. That's why my motion is here. That's why it says we should travel, so that Canadians would believe that their lawmakers actually want to hear from the people who are ruled by the law. That committee did it. Congratulations to them. This committee won't. Shame on them.
Next, I had made reference, but I hadn't talked much about.... Again, Mr. Chair, I'm underscoring how Canada, the House of Commons, and governments of the day have looked at democracy and compared it to what we consider to be the lack of democracy in this process, and hence my motion. That's why we're continuing as much as possible to convince members by underscoring the strengths of the arguments that are represented by the motion.
I made reference to, but did not talk about it at any length, the foreign affairs committee that travelled to Ukraine in the spring of 2012 to study democracy. That much I said, but I did not spend time talking at all about what they did. I just want to mention a couple of parts of that because my motion calls for us to travel, to call witnesses, and to have hearings.
Canadians spent probably hundreds of thousands, but certainly tens of thousands of dollars to send the foreign affairs committee all the way to Ukraine to study it. What did they do? Did they just tour around, take pictures, put together a little folio, and send it back? No. They actually spent a whole week holding public hearings every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. They had witnesses from all kinds of groups and backgrounds: political people; media about a free press; experts on democracy, history, and international affairs; and representatives from civil society. They were in three different parts of the country: Kiev—which is a beautiful city, I've been there, and it breaks my heart to see what's happening there, especially in Independence Square—Lviv, and then Kharkov. I've been to Kharkov and Donetsk. Both of them are centres of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, and once you've been to Kiev and then the eastern part of the country, you sure get a sense of that divide.
However, I'm raising this in the context of my motion, Mr. Chair, because I want to point out that Canadians, a Canadian delegation, a Canadian committee on foreign affairs went all the way to Ukraine not just to study it, but to actually hold hearings. A Canadian delegation holding hearings with Ukrainians from all walks of life, experts and ordinary folk, to talk about their democracy, to talk about their system of elections, their system of representation. We wanted that to happen, which is why we spent all of that money, because we saw it as a contribution to the struggle in Ukraine for democracy and rule of law and human rights.
The reason I'm raising that, Mr. Chair, is that we have this incredible dichotomy of a committee here, seized of our own election reform act, refusing to travel outside Ottawa, and yet the very same government, the very same government, during this Parliament—