There's no amendment being suggested.
I think what we need is a public commitment from the Prime Minister to appear before the committee. The invitation has already been made. All this motion would do is reassert that invitation. I think the Liberal members of this committee could do that very effectively in an informal way without a motion of the committee, but I don't see a reason to decline a motion that has a lot of merit in terms of what we might hear and things that I'm interested to hear and that I think a lot of Canadians are interested to hear, frankly, if it means we're just going to move on and not have the Prime Minister appear for what I consider to be his own study.
I'm not prepared to move on this without that commitment from the Prime Minister. There's no amendment or motion that's going to get that for us by virtue of a resolution of the committee. That's a decision the Prime Minister continues to make, which is to forgo this invitation. That's what's causing the logjam.
In terms of a lot of the other concerns the Liberals have raised, even if we don't agree.... The crux of this Parliament is negotiation and compromise. I don't come here expecting to get everything I want or that everything is going to go exactly how I want, but I do expect for people to sit down and try to hammer out some reasonable compromises.
The Prime Minister's appearing for an hour on a study that's the direct result of his proposal on how to prevent political abuses of prorogation is an eminently reasonable proposal. I'm disappointed we haven't seen any action on that. There have been conversations at this table, and particularly around this table, that haven't yet issued in that commitment on his behalf. We continue to have what I think is a structurally flawed conversation, because it rests on the idea that we either accept this motion whole hog or we move on as if there's no reason for the Prime Minister to defend his decision to prorogue Parliament. I don't accept that.
I do think there are a lot of good things in this motion. I do think there are some accountability questions about the WE Charity as yet unanswered. I do recognize some progress is being made at other committees. I'm willing to try to move on to other important work, if we can hear from the Prime Minister on an issue that is central to his constitutional powers. If we could do that, it would be great. I recognize nobody at this committee can make that decision for him today, but I don't want to continue on this conversation pretending there isn't a way out when there is. It's an hour of the Prime Minister's time, which I don't think is a lot to ask.
Let's have the conversation, but let's stop having it as if there isn't an offer on the table and as if that offer isn't reasonable. An hour of the Prime Minister's time is very reasonable for his own study, to do justice to his own proposal and to set a good precedent, a precedent that Liberals now may not feel is warranted, but I'm sure at some point in the future will feel would have been a good precedent. Let's get on with doing that good work, and then go on to something else that, hopefully, we can make some progress on.
I think that has to be the spirit of this Parliament, and we're not seeing that in this ongoing filibuster. There's no movement on the part of the government. That's the other side of this. If there's no plausible offer for how to meet somewhere in between coming from the government, I think people need to recognize that is itself a form of toxic partisanship. There are people willing to talk about solutions for how we move forward in a less partisan way, but jamming up this committee for meetings and meetings and meetings on end, because they know they're going to lose a vote on a motion, is not a non-partisan approach. Negotiating a solution is. If they don't like this offer of the Prime Minister's appearing, I think they need to start talking about some other options.
I appreciate the frustration Ms. Vecchio voiced earlier, which is “What are the other options? Put something on the table.” However, here we are. The opposition has a proposal. The government has made it clear it doesn't like it, and we're at loggerheads because we can't get any kind of interesting counter-offer on the part of the government. Here we are and here we will remain until there's some movement on this.
I'm proposing something. It's not up to this committee to decide whether it's a good offer or not, but I hope that members on the committee will be taking that offer back and urging people on their side to take that seriously. At one point it seemed there were some folks on that side who were taking it seriously, and then the trail went cold.
We should be thinking about how we get back on that trail to allow us to do some meaningful work, which is something we have neglected to do for some time now.