Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it. I just want to make sure, because when you're attending virtually, sometimes you don't get seen. I know you're diligent on that.
I support this motion. It's been pretty interesting, what's taken place over the last number of hours. The minister has been actively lobbying me to move this bill as quickly as possible, and I do support that, but I also support a proper process. Mr. Dufresne and his team are very valuable pieces of what needs to be done even outside of Bill C-27, which is updating the Privacy Act in several different ways, and it's the same with the Competition Bureau.
I find it hard to accept that the minister sat across the table from us.... He talked about amendments. Government members even referred to them as amendments. I actually did a point of order, if you remember, Mr. Chair, with regard to whether they were ideas or amendments. We know that right now they're just ideas that were presented in front of the committee, despite having over a year. I'm glad that we had the context of them, and some of the stuff that was floated about is important, but I don't know how it's reasonable to expect people to come in front of us in this speculative process that we have, when the minister says he is actually going to fix his bill, which he already acknowledged is flawed and has errors. We discussed that in the House of Commons and now we have come here. This committee also passed a request to the witnesses coming forward on whether they could bring amendments to us as well so that we could properly vet them and also share them with other presenters so that people could look at those things.
How do you start something so important and so critical with only a speculative process? I know that right now I would have a motion to bring back the Privacy Commissioner's team after we know exactly what is there.
There's also the process of respect that Mr. Perkins mentioned. The minister sat right there, and then the next day went out to the public and provided new information that he didn't provide to us as members of Parliament. He went to basically a public event and disclosed new information that he wasn't willing to provide to his own committee the day before. It's pretty hard to accept that and also to be responsible for one of the most important pieces of legislation.
I would point out that some of the groups coming forth will be from the not-for-profit sector or the private sector. They actually have to use time, resources and in some cases money to draft their amendments into a legal form and context to present them to us. They also sit there, in front of the world, with their reputations on the line over what they present to us, and it's a mockery to them when they don't even know exactly what they're presenting to.
I can't believe that we're proceeding in such a way and that the government doesn't have the amendments to table in front of us so that we can also make sure that they'll be in a context that will be accepted within the bill. I spoke at the last meeting about how the government had amendments to my legislation. The government brought them forth, theminister himself, and then the Liberals not only did that but also ruled them out of order themselves.
We don't know exactly where this is going, but I'd like to have the proper context of how we're going to analyze the bill. I think it's bad, when we have our guests in front of us, that we have to go on the fly about what the minister may or may not have and whether he's serious on all the points that were raised. Are they actually going to be ones that will be collectively put together? I don't know. What's the point of our spending resources, time and energy and then treating our guests so poorly? They have to come here and wing it in terms of what theminister and the government have as legislation.
To wrap up, we know two things. One, there's a high degree of interest in this bill. It's very technical. Part of it is new. The second thing we know is that when we invite people to come in front of us, we know that the bill right now is critically flawed. It's had one debate in the House already, and it's our job to fix it. The minister has indicated that it needs fixing, but we don't know what parts they're supportive of or not supportive of. That's unfortunate. Again, I've been open to trying to move this legislation along as quickly as possible, but I'm not going to be part of a broken process from the very beginning.
That's just unfortunate, because I think we all want to move on this.