Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate, I'm sure, the good faith efforts that were undertaken in the context of the suspension. Nonetheless, I think members have quite wisely elected to create an opportunity for me to continue to advance the important arguments that I have been advancing and to bring them to a conclusion in the fullness of time.
I will reflect, though, on the core issue here, because there are a lot of things that are being discussed, and I think it is important that we develop the principal issues that inform our perspectives and our concerns about the way the government has proceeded.
Fundamentally, here is where we are. The opposition is united in its conviction that the amendment that is standing before us is important, because the amendment would ensure that we will proceed on a consensus basis. It would ensure that what has been the general practice of the committee will continue to be the practice of the committee and the House with respect to changes to the Standing Orders. That's the position of the opposition: that this is what needs to happen and that we need to have unanimity in the way we proceed with respect to changes in the Standing Orders.
I also think that attached to that we have made the reasonable ask that we have a built-in assurance that the consensus approach will be what is undertaken through the study.
It is not unreasonable for us to simply ask that in the motion convening the study, those terms are clearly defined and set out. That's what we want. That's what we're asking for.
I think we should pass this amendment and then proceed with discussion and, fairly efficiently, the adoption of the motion, and then have a detailed study of the Standing Orders. That's our position, and we have reasons. I am talking about them and I'm going to continue to talk about them.
The government's position is quite interesting, as I understand it, because I haven't heard the members formally argue in defence of what seems to be the actual effect of defeating the amendment. I haven't heard anyone from the government say “We want to do this unilaterally.” In fact, Ms. Tassi, during our discussion earlier on in the day, said that they want to be able to proceed with the discussion, and she was not keen on the use of the word “unilateral”, yet the government is reluctant to adopt the amendment.
It's a mystery to me that there actually seems to be broad assent to the principle—well, I don't know if there's actually broad assent to the amendment, and this is why we in the opposition are looking for an assurance. The arguments that the government members make suggest that they might well be open to the principle of the amendment but don't want to support the amendment itself because they see it as premature to talk about the process of the study before the study is begun.
I'll just say that of course it's not premature to talk about how the study would proceed before the study is undertaken. That is how you study anything. You initially define what the study is going to be about and how the study is going to unfold.
If I look at the main motion that the amendment proposes to amend, it does what you would expect a motion to do, which is to define the contours of the study that the government intends to undertake. It prescribes a time period. It's actually more prescriptive already than many of the motions I've seen, in terms of prescribing the amount of time before which witnesses must be submitted and describing the specific sub-themes of the study. As opposed to just talking about the general study, it's actually describing the sub-themes of the study. There is a process for inviting members of caucus who are not members of the committee.
There is a fairly prescriptive nature to this motion that we can see, as is appropriate, I think, when a study is being undertaken, yet members of the governing party on this committee, broadly speaking, seem to be allergic to the amendment for reasons that are difficult for me, at least, to understand. If they agree that we should all work together, if they agree that we should not proceed without some measure of agreement, then simply pass an amendment that says that.
If you are opposing the amendment, people are liable to come to the conclusion that you are doing so because you disagree with it, right? For people who are watching these proceedings and who see that the government members here do not want to support the amendment, it is reasonable for them to conclude that the members probably don't want to support the amendment because they don't agree with the amendment.
In various conversations, people from the government side have pleaded good faith in just wanting to undertake a discussion and wanting to ensure that everybody is listened to and heard in the context of that discussion. If that's what you want, then pass the amendment. If that's what the government wants, then they can pass the amendment. If that's not what they want, then we have to have this out, right? If their intent—as it seems to be, as I think we have concluded—is to actually create circumstances under which the government can impose changes unilaterally, then we have....
Sorry; I lost my train of thought there.
We have a problem here that we have to debate if the government actually disagrees with this amendment. What has been striking—