Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I'm going to be surprisingly brief and provide a short summary of the various points that have been raised.
All of us around this table agree that we should shed more light on this matter. In the initial meetings that our committee held on the issue, we tried to determine whether there had been any foreign interference in Canadian elections. The answer was yes. Have we gathered enough information? The answer is no.
Should we be accountable to voters? Should we work hard to increase their trust in the electoral system and, especially, to protect our democracy? The answer is yes.
Some of us are wondering if we'll have enough time. We'll discuss all that tomorrow. We have five weeks before we complete the business we've planned. I just want to tell all the members of this committee that we took the initiative of preempting our study on the possibility of making the hybrid form of parliamentary proceedings permanent. We started examining the matter sooner than planned, since we don't have to give a response until June.
Looking at this from the outside, I put myself in the shoes of the voters wondering if they're safe, considering the article that Global News published on November 7. I don't think they're reassured.
By holding four more meetings and calling new witnesses, our committee can determine what the next steps should be. We've even discussed the Department of National Defence. I thought we could also dig a little deeper to determine why we don't have a complete picture of the situation. Our committee must pursue this matter to the end. As the saying goes, we need to strike while the iron's hot. We're conducting the study and we have to finish the job. That's why the Bloc Québécois signed this letter giving its consent to the motion.
I've spoken longer than I wanted. I hope that, within the hour, we'll have managed to vote on the motion so we don't use up the time normally reserved for other committees and that we've concluded this meeting properly, in the same way it started.