Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the committee members and the witness for being here.
What is taking place today is not consistent with my original motion, which was passed at this committee. With that, I have a notice of motion that I would like to pass. I'd like to get a discussion going right away, because it's consistent with what was originally decided upon.
Second, I think it's germane to what takes place at this meeting thereafter.
I have submitted the motion and would like to read it into the record. It reads:
That, consistent with the motion passed by this committee on Monday, October 28, 2024, the committee invite, and if this invitation is not accepted, summons, pursuant to Standing Order 108(1), Rogers Communications Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tony Staffieri to appear before the committee for a minimum of two hours by December 12, 2024.
With that, I've built the motion so that it can actually drop the component from “invite” to “accepted” and just go directly to “summons”.
I'd like to be able to speak to this motion, briefly, in the sense that we requested a specific course of action to be taken, and we passed that in this committee. Subsequently there was an alteration to it.
However, now we have Mr. Leech in front of us, who was not invited to this meeting and is a substitute at the very last moment. That is unacceptable, in my opinion, not only to this committee, but I think also to Canadians and consumers. I think it's part of a play on the committee and avoiding accountability.
The date that we originally passed, actually—if you remember, Mr. Chair—was for last month. However, we gave exceptional time and leverage to Rogers Communications to choose a date, which they did, so that the CEO could be here for the practices of hidden billing that are taking place and have been identified as a real concern among Canadians. At the last minute they did a rope-a-dope on this committee. They switched out the witness, and today I really don't have much interest in questioning Mr. Leech.
What I have an interest in is having the CEO here, as I originally proposed and as was passed by this committee.
With that, I would like us to move into that discussion and to see if we can get consensus, because I don't believe today's meeting is going to be very worthwhile at all with regard to the objective that was originally sought in my motion, which was passed by this committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.