Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Just to follow up on that, I think the chair was quite clear on why this was inadmissible. I would think it incumbent upon members, before they put a motion before a committee, to give consideration to whether it's an admissible amendment or not. I would suggest that every single member on that side of the committee knew it was inadmissible before they overruled the chair on this.
Quite frankly, I'm a little confused. If we go back to the beginning of this, which I often find quite helpful, you see that when this legislation first came, the opposition agreed unanimously to pass it to committee.
Then they decided they didn't like the way things were going; they decided to delay and filibuster this. Then the opposition decided to pass a motion to postpone it by 10 months—Monsieur Lemay's motion.
When we once again, in our consistent, straightforward manner, insisted that it is important not only to our government but to all Canadians to have equal rights and we held a summer meeting, which is quite extraordinary, showing our dedication to this, the opposition once again delayed and filibustered it.
Finally we got back, and thinking that we were operating in good faith this fall—and I think this is the critical point to have on the record—we sat across the table from the opposition, who then said they were willing to go to clause-by-clause finally and move forward on this in a positive manner, only to overrule a ruling of the chair, which they had to have clearly known was inadmissible. Any legislative assistant on the other side would have told them that this was inadmissible, never mind going to a clerk.
Then they decided to go beyond that and pass this motion. Then they wanted unanimous consent not to pass the motion—to withdraw the motion—but they still voted for it.
Although this goes quite well with the history of the LIberal Party and their flipping and flopping back and forth on human rights, there are people watching at home who are very disappointed with the progress the opposition is making on this.
I would suggest that if the opposition is finally willing to rescind this motion, is finally willing to move forward in a cooperative manner, then in the next three and a half hours that we have left, we could get this motion to the Senate and really get some good work done before we break for Christmas. I would ask the opposition to quit playing silly bugger with these games, with which they very clearly don't even have a cognizant idea where they're going, and move forward with this in a progressive spirit of Christmas to try to get something done on this.
Maybe the opposition would like to clarify whether they're actually voting for this on this occasion, or against it this time, or.... Where are we going here?