Well, I will continue.
Before we left, I was certainly quite concerned with the motion. I would ask Monsieur Lessard to rethink his motion, at least in part if not wholly. I know in our past committees—and I've been on the human resources committee for quite some time, and on the immigration committee before that—it has not been unusual at a very minimum to take the reports of the other committees that have already studied a particular issue and, if nothing else, table them with this particular report and at times to make reference to it.
Now I know that we specifically said it should be also considered as part of the study. It would only make sense to do that, but to say that we would not append the evidence of the witnesses of the previous committee, whether or not we refer to it in the report, is an injustice, and it shouldn't happen. I think it's wrong. It clearly sets a wrong precedent going forward, and I would even argue so far as to say that if it's appended, then really, we should consider it as we would.
More particularly, I know that during the course of my examination of witnesses, I specifically referred to testimony given in the previous hearing in my questioning of the witnesses. One of the reasons I did that, among others, was that it played in respect of this report, and I quoted substantially from the various witnesses who gave testimony and questioned the witnesses who appeared here with respect to those particular pieces of evidence.
How do you extract that from this study? It would be nearly impossible. Obviously I'll argue that matter later, but it seems to me that I have every right to have that considered, because I brought it before the witnesses here, and they actually testified with respect to it.
Rather than getting into that kind of nicety, I think it would be well advised if Mr. Lessard would rethink his motion and allow it to be for what it is. As a very minimum if he can't go that far, he should at least go so far as to have the evidence appended to the report, even if he feels the analyst shouldn't refer to it. I'll argue that point later, because I don't know how they cannot, given that I used pieces of it.
Having said that, I would hope there would be reconsideration, and obviously I'll be opposing this motion. I think it's in wrong in principle. It's wrong in precedent, and it certainly strikes at the very heart of openness and transparency before committees and how we conduct business here and in other committees.