I have just a couple of things.
I really wish the Liberal industry critic were here. He hasn't been able to attend these meetings because he's been so busy with the copyright committee. At least two other of our members on this committee serve on that one as well, but he's been too busy. Of course, we wanted to have more meetings with the copyright committee as well, but members of the opposition--the united opposition--have denied us that opportunity.
We thought that at some point the opposition parties would get together and implode this Parliament--as they have, or as they are about to do tomorrow--and we thought the copyright bill was so important that we needed to get it passed. Witness after witness came before that committee and said the same thing. Because of the games played by the opposition parties, we obviously haven't passed it, but certainly if the Liberal industry critic had been able to sit on the industry committee at this time or over the last few months, perhaps he would have added a different perspective to these proceedings today.
Just as we made the topic of the copyright bill a question of some urgency, we also said right from the start--I think from our first meeting in January after we came back from the break--that the study of the Investment Canada Act should be an absolute priority and that if we were going to be forced into an election by the opposition parties, perhaps it would be productive for our committee to at least get through the Investment Canada Act study and produce a report that might be useful to the next government, the next Parliament, after the election.
Obviously we're not there yet. The argument on the other side was that for some reason there was a real need to have meetings on this census bill, this private member's bill, that we're talking about today, but it turns out that actually we didn't really need any meetings from the opposition side of things because they just want to pass it as is, without even going through the regular clause-by-clause review. It's very, very odd, I must say.
So here we find ourselves. I've heard the suggestion from Mr. Rota. We can go back and take a look at the evidence, but it was a pretty unequivocal suggestion that we move to clause-by-clause consideration.
I agree with Mr. Rota, and thus I've moved my amendment to his original motion to reflect his own suggestion. I would encourage members of all parties to rally behind Mr. Rota and adopt his suggestion as well.