First of all, I want to thank everyone for their candid comments today and for being honest. We should have been doing this probably several weeks ago.
I do have to say, though, that I really believe that we all came into this conversation this morning in good faith.
Karen, you came forward and said, what's the plan for today. We need to come to a compromise. We need to get somewhere. We need to get to a vote.
To say that nothing was brought forward is a bit unfair, because after that was brought forward, from there we spoke about whether a written response would suffice. From there, there was a bit of conversation about that. From there, the issue about perhaps the opposition members coming up with exactly what they're looking for was discussed as well.
We have to make it very clear. We had a discussion at the beginning of the meeting. I think it was a good discussion, a robust discussion and an honest discussion, but let's be frank. There was never a decision that was made and we just continued on with the course of business.
I need to be clear. I know for myself and I know many of my colleagues want to negotiate in good faith. We want to find a path forward here, and to your point, we have a lot of really important work that is waiting for us.
To say that there was a decision that had been made by the end of the meeting, no decision had been made. We talked about it. We discussed it, but we didn't come up with a consensus.
I feel compelled to say that. At the end of the day, to come up with something on paper and then from there to vote on it next week, I don't know really what is the issue with this short delay in order to allow us to properly reflect on what's been brought forward. I just don't understand why that is so difficult. Maybe I'm missing something, but I felt I had to share that.