Thank you Mr. Chair. I'll be brief.
First of all, voting to support the chair's decision is not a vote on the substance of the amendment. It's a procedural vote in accordance with a parliamentary tradition, ruled upon by the chair.
We all agree that solutions are needed for people receiving sickness benefits. Very respectfully, however, I must say to my colleague that Ms. Chabot has been defending this position from the outset. It's the reason for our current study of employment insurance. It's totally false to say that Ms. Chabot does not defend this idea. She's the one who has been defending it in committee from the start.
Thus far, we have always worked in a non-partisan way and been very respectful on all sides. I hope that this will continue. It wasn't a decision about the substance of the amendment.
The bottom line, Mr. Chair, is that I am grateful you gave us an opportunity to debate an amendment that had already been deemed inadmissible. I would imagine that we should, as of now, only debate the clause, and not an amendment that we are not entitled to debate.