Thank you very much, Madame Chair. I just wanted to take an opportunity to put on the record some thoughts about Mr. Nater's subamendment and his most recent comments.
First of all, I think there is at least a mild incoherence in the idea that we're more likely to meet a deadline if we don't set a deadline. I think the best way to meet a deadline is to set a deadline. I think the deadline, by virtue of the wording of the subamendment that was adopted, is actually quite strict in that it requires decisions to be taken.
The problem at PROC for a long time now is not that the committee couldn't get through a vote if a vote were held. It's that we haven't been having the votes. The concern that the Conservatives have raised—which is a concern that I share, having looked at other committees and the way some of them have operated in terms of finalizing reports—is that we might not get to where we make those decisions, and therefore the report gets talked out. That's why the subamendment is very clear that the questions necessary for finalizing that report have to be put by the end of the day on June 8.
I respect that there are administrative constraints in this Parliament. In fact, one of the things I've found frustrating, being a member of three committees, is that I find members on those committees often don't take into account.... They want to go on with business as if it were perfectly normal and don't really recognize that there's a duty on members of Parliament to organize our work, to be able to accomplish our legitimate goals within the resources that the House is able to provide in the circumstances. I think we're often asking too much of the House to provide resources to support normal decision-making procedures and timelines that don't recognize where we are. I think that members of Parliament can do that, however, if they're not motivated by other political reasons, perhaps, for delay—in this case whether in respect of not wanting to see a report on prorogation or not wanting to see progress on Bill C-19.
As a New Democrat, I want to see us make progress on both. That's why I think adopting a strict timeline, getting on to consideration of the draft report.... I'm not going to reveal any details, but I've seen that draft report. Overall, I think it's a pretty good reflection of what the committee has heard. I don't think that the main report language ought to be very controversial, frankly. There'll be a question as to recommendations. I think that if we can submit our proposed recommendations by Friday and come prepared for a discussion on Tuesday, we should be able to organize our work to assign a legitimate amount of time to each recommendation and then hold the vote. Once all the votes have been held, we'll have the content of a report that we can then vote on, as the clerk has indicated. If the committee makes the decision that it doesn't want to report to go back to Parliament, that's a horse of a different colour. At that point, it's the committee deciding it doesn't want that.
That won't be my option. Unless things unroll very differently than I imagine they will, I think on balance it's really important for PROC to be reporting back to the House, but I believe that if we want to, we can organize our work to come to a final decision, even within the context of a two-hour meeting on Tuesday. I don't think that it should take us eight or 10 hours if we all behave like grown-ups and do our preparatory work properly. This is something we can do as professionals in a professional workplace. The question is whether we want it done, and the first way to signal that we do want it done is to accept a rigorous deadline, and we have one as it stands.
If we adopt Mr. Nater's subamendment, we will not have a rigorous deadline. In fact, we won't really have any deadline at all, and then I think we run the risk of not only not reporting back on prorogation but also of not reporting Bill C-19 back to the House. That's just an unacceptable outcome to me. I want both, and I think it's still within our power to do both.
I won't waste any more time with my comments, but I wanted to have those on the record.
Thank you, Madam Chair.