Oh, there are a lot of examples piling up. What's interesting on this one, I thought, was that they only had one meeting and they did it in Toronto. They didn't even have to meet here in Ottawa. It's not like you have to do it here—must, must, must. No, in some cases, they went somewhere else and that's where they had their hearing. They heard from the folks they needed to. They thought that was the right geographical place to be in, so they had their meeting. Ottawa, quite frankly, as a place, had nothing to do with it.
The reason I'm making this point, Chair, to underscore my motion is that it's not necessarily the absolute raw number of communities that you visit, it's that you visit communities that are representative of Canadians who are impacted by the law that's put before them. That's all we're asking for.
I didn't read out 20 meetings and 30 meetings because that was the standard I want to bump the government up to. In fact, I've already made it clear from the get-go that in our motion, if the government were willing to sit down and talk and negotiate, there's room for us to move. But that requires the government moving off their position, which is: no way, no one, never. Just in the safety and security of the Ottawa bubble, that's it.
Somewhere in between those two positions was peace and harmony and even a bit of goodwill. It certainly would have been better governance and good governance compared to where we are now, because we would have actually been working on the bill at hand and we'd be talking about the witnesses that we want to hear in those communities. We wouldn't go on having to listen to me pontificate forever and ever and ever. None of that would be relevant. It wouldn't matter. We would be doing the real work.
I have said it before and this I need to say again. We are still prepared to do the work, but more and more of the sand is running out of the hourglass. It's becoming very clear that no matter what we say or do, short of Canadians telling this government you have to change your process, they're going to ram through what they want, and ramming doesn't necessarily mean the speed involved. In a democracy, it also means whether or not the minority is being respected. And you know what? That's a lot about what makes Canada work and that's why a lot of people admire Canada, because of the respect we show each other regardless of our status. Regardless of whether we're one of 30 million or standing alone. They matter, and in a democracy, that vote matters, because if you don't have that vote in a democracy, you might as well not live in one because it's not relevant to you.
So Mr. Chair, that's what brought about our motion, the one with three distinct sections. It talks about witnesses, who we think should be here. That's why I've taken the time to mention some of the groups we've actually listed in our motion so I could offer you and colleagues supporting evidence for this motion. I've talked at great length about other examples of democracy where respect is a cornerstone of their process. I've raised examples of this House of Commons sending delegations from Ottawa to all the far-flung corners of this great, huge country.
I've even showed how we spent tens of thousands of dollars to send Canadian MPs and a Canadian House of Commons standing committee all the way to Ukraine, where they held public hearings with Ukrainians in three different cities to ask them about their democracy.