First off, I appreciate the comments from Mr. Silva regarding the spirit of this committee. I came in during the 39th Parliament. The subcommittee was already running in the 38th. I was enlisted with the whole notion and told clearly that one of the main components of it was consensus. And I think the main thing is what Mr. Silva pointed out, the veritable volume of human rights issues that we can have common ground on and do something significant about.
There's also the fact that we made a decision a few months ago that we would not only focus on human rights infractions, but we would try to identify those places where we could make a significant difference rather than just do a study. I think the phrase was “do a press release”, but we would try to do studies in specific areas where the Government of Canada or the people of Canada had a good relationship--or had some kind of relational gravitas--so that our study would actually make a difference. That whole list consistently is held up when we go to several meetings where we've had motions like this introduced. We basically go through an entire meeting debating this kind of thing, which we don't have any evidence of here.
In fact, I have to say that I've asked a couple of staffers about this as well. Maybe Mr. Dorion knows something the government side doesn't know, but these are Canadian human rights offices. There is an inference here that immigrants are going to be...it's a clear inference that the government is hurting immigrants. I don't know if there are any CHRC offices that are exclusively in the domain of immigrants. I thought they were in the domain of all citizens of Canada and anyone who'd like to approach them. That I have difficulty with as well.
Obviously, Mr. Chair, we can't support this motion. If there is some substance to it, and, as I said earlier, if Mr. Dorion thinks it's important and the entire committee does, then we'll call witnesses and see if there is some substance to it, and we'll do a report and send a message to the government that they need to fix it.