No. It kind of cuts both ways. However, I think the key element here, Mark, that you may not be grasping or admitting is that both committees and the House can work at the same time independently.
Your argument is that why in the world would the Conservatives spring this on us when we're discussing things like Bill C-2 and Bill C-4 and getting aid to Canadians, which, quite frankly, I support. Even though we believe the government is going to have to account for its spending measures, I don't think anyone is denying the fact that millions of Canadians need support financially right now.
The House is dealing with that right now. We're having a vote in about half an hour on those two motions right now. The House can do its work. We're not circumventing any of the work of the House and parliamentarians. All we're doing is saying that now that committees have been restruck, let's start meeting to discuss things like prorogation and some of the other elements of other committees that had met.
How about the China-Canada special committee? That was struck down. Do you not believe that's an important committee? I certainly do. I would like to see that back up and running, and I think most Canadians would as well.
That's my only point, Mark. You keep saying that it's offensive because we've sprung this on you without notice. Well, perhaps it was without notice, but it certainly wasn't unwarranted. There is plenty of history and precedence about studies about prorogation. Governments in the past have prorogued on many occasions, and committees have studied the reasons for that. That's all that Karen's motion is speaking to. Let's call witnesses and produce documents to ask the government the very simple question: Why? Why did you prorogue? What did you believe were the underlying and motivating factors to prorogue, which shut down Parliament for five weeks? That's as simple as it gets.
You may want to study the wording of Karen's motion, but that in essence is what it's saying. Give us the ability to call witnesses and produce documents and let's study it. That's it. In a nutshell, that's it.
I don't know how much time you actually need. For example, I know we're probably going to be voting for an hour. This is online voting, and the last couple of nights when we've had practice sessions it has usually taken about an hour to run through the roll. You'll have ample opportunity to go over the motion—line by line and clause by clause—that Karen brought forward, so I don't think there is really any excuse to say that we need to delay. I believe that probably by the time we get back after the 6:30 vote has concluded you will have had, I would hope, the opportunity to read through the motion and perhaps speak to whether or not you want to vote on the motion at that time.
That's all I have to say, Madam Chair. Thank you.