Thank you, Madam Chair.
I don't want to take up too much time. I do want to say that for me, anyway, the important objective of today's meeting is to get to a point where we know that the committee is resolved to issue a report next Tuesday so that we can go on to studying Bill C-19. One thing that I think is different about what Mr. Nater is proposing, from what he intends to remove, is that in Monsieur Lauzon's amendment....
I mean, while I very clearly share, as I've been stating consistently for months, Monsieur Therrien's and other opposition MPs' desire to see the Prime Minister at committee, I also share their express pessimism about the idea that he will appear. They've been very clear that they don't think he will come. The question, then, is how do you generate some political accountability for that? I believe that's best done with filing a report.
If indeed the Prime Minister doesn't come over the next week, Monsieur Lauzon's version makes a descriptive claim about that. Right now we're really just talking about adding a fact to the report, which won't be in dispute at that point. The Prime Minister will either have come or not come. What Mr. Nater's amendment does is leave the descriptive realm, if you'll excuse a philosopher's definition here, and move into the normative. It starts making claims about what the report, one that we haven't even agreed to yet that we're going to get done, will say. I think we need to resolve the question about whether we are in fact committed to getting a report done before we start discussing the recommendations of the report.
That's why I won't be voting in favour of this amendment, although I'm quite open to a discussion about what the content of the report might be and the kinds of recommendations we'll be making in respect of what I think is a failure of leadership on the part of the Prime Minister not to be here. That's a discussion for what goes in the report once we know we're making one. We have to get there first.
Thank you very much.