Mr. Chair, as you said earlier, once the committee has met, it comes back here. There are of course one or two matters on which we haven't agreed. At that point, it was the Standing Committee on Human Resources that arbitrated and decided. We've cleared a lot of ground with regard to planning the tour. The purpose of the idea of working in this way is to avoid situations in which one party could catch the others off guard, as the Conservatives did the last time. We reversed decisions that had been made. On three occasions, as I told you yesterday, we went over the same motion until it was changed, and it was changed in accordance with what the Chair decided when he ruled.
As regards Bill C-257, we find ourselves in an unbalanced situation. Why? Because there's been some improvisation. As one Liberal colleague said earlier, when a motion is announced, we can debate it together, involving one representative per party. That enables us to return to our caucuses to arbitrate the issue and avoid improvisation.
For some time now, we've seen that the Conservatives' motions, like the one introduced earlier, have been improvised. I wouldn't suddenly introduce an idea that I had just thought of in order to make a motion. First I'd reflect on the matter with my colleagues in order to determine whether it made sense, whether it was consistent with the rules and whether it was of a kind to advance the business of the committee in a constructive manner. Representing one's political position is not everything; you also have to try to advance the committee's business.
Coming back to what my colleague is proposing here, as our friend Mr. Silva said, some committees don't have steering committees. Here, in this committee, we tend to improvise, and that yields the results that we've seen. In my view, it would be prudent to make our committee, which already exists, work. Two hours have been scheduled for tomorrow morning. That should enable us to do an acceptable job and to come back here to make a coherent recommendation. Then we could determine whether it's worth the trouble. For my part, I wouldn't take any other initiative than that one.
I ask our colleague to withdraw his motion, which would enable us to talk with our people and to assess what will happen tomorrow following the two hours of business we'll conduct together. We haven't rejected what was moved yesterday: we've learned of it. Can we give ourselves the time to consider it? Tomorrow morning, a number of proposed elements will be accepted. We'll discuss other aspects.
Mr. Chair, I invite our colleague to withdraw his motion and to reflect on the matter. We will do the same. Let us stop improvising.
