Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I just want to stress that, absolutely, we started our meetings on Tuesday morning at 8:45, and yesterday we did suspend, with the consent of all parties, to see if we could find a resolution. A resolution could not be found, and it was with the agreement of the parliamentary secretary that we reconvened at 11 o'clock last night. During that time, let me say that members of the committee were rather rowdy and the behaviour lacked decorum, to put it politely. The chair had to, and did at one stage, suspend the meeting for five minutes in order to bring back decorum. There were members who insisted upon speaking even after the chair had hit the gavel and asked for order, and the chair made it very clear, on more than one occasion, that if decorum did not return and people were not prepared to listen.... And I'm not going to go into each and every thing I said, though I could, because I really do want to get back to listening to what Madame Groguhé has to say. At that stage, after giving fair notice, I was left with no choice as a chair but to adjourn the meeting.
At that time, the government—I'm presuming it was the government representatives—phoned the chair, who was on a trip with the Prime Minister, and knowing that there are two chairs here, two vice-chairs, they bypassed the vice-chairs, went to the chair, and got the chair to direct the clerk to call another meeting. That meeting was called, and we went into that meeting. So a new meeting started at that time. It was not a suspension. We came back into the meeting, and when the legitimacy of that meeting.... There were some concerns around some of those issues, and at that time I suspended.
We've come back. We've been in this meeting now, I would say, since 8:30 this morning.
I just wanted to get that on the record. This particular parliamentarian, while in the chair, was not, and would never be, frivolous with the responsibilities of the chair and did not adjourn on frivolous grounds. I would say she adjourned on grounds that any chair would be the most reluctant to adjourn on, and that is because the behaviour of the members lacked decorum and was not what it should have been.
Thank you.