Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to start by acknowledging the great privilege it is to sit in this seat on a committee as part of the House of Commons.
So much of what you do in your position and what we do as parliamentarians in the pursuit of peace, order and good government is to balance competing interests. The competing interests we see here are, ironically, the right of a member to see his bill proceed in a normal process so that it is reviewed and receives the benefit of a substantive assessment, versus procedural fairness. In this case, the procedure threatens to suffocate the substance.
What we're arguing for here, Mr. Chair—