Thank you again.
The committee will now move to committee business. We have to be expeditious. This is a difficult matter.
Last week, under future business, you'll recall that I proposed a couple of options, one of which was for us to spend an extra hour on an anticipated motion from Mr. Cotler dealing with incitement to genocide by the Iranian regime. The committee decided, in its wisdom, consensually, that we would not hold an extra hour to do additional business, that we would simply hear from the Uyghur witnesses.
Since that time, Mr. Cotler has furnished the clerk with a copy of the motion, which has since been distributed to you. It's the clerk's view that this motion was not received in time for the 48 hours required by the main committee's standing orders. Because of translation, etc., and the receipt of it, it was not distributed to committee members until yesterday.
Mr. Cotler, I understand, would still like the committee to consider the motion, so I'm looking for your direction, colleagues. We discussed this last week. There was a consensus. I made my preference known, which was to actually study the motion this week, but the committee decided otherwise, and now we have a procedural ambiguity, shall we say.
I am, for the purposes of being flexible, prepared to rule that the motion was received pursuant to the 48 hours' notice required, insofar as it was sent on Thursday night to the clerk. I'm prepared to make that ruling, but it's then the committee's decision whether or not we want to proceed to discuss this matter now and vote on it now or, as we decided last week, delay it until our next available meeting.
Mr. Cotler.