Mr. Chair, I'm a little disturbed by the tone of debate from the Conservative side. With the legislation in place, we have had exactly one outside witness on EFTA legislation. You'll recall in the last Parliament we didn't call witnesses forward on the legislation. That's part of the reason it died. We have had one witness--Karl Risser--on the legislation.
Mr. Brison is absolutely right. For us to do our responsibility to the Canadian public, calling more than one outside witness is a minimum.
I'm concerned about the tone of the debate, that after calling one witness the Conservatives seem to want to ram this through. It's disturbing to me when the implications for jobs in Canada are pretty significant.
Regarding Mr. Brison's motion, I don't see why anyone would object to it. It just means we're doing our job as a committee. But if that's going to be the tone every time we try to bring witnesses forward, I'm concerned about the tone and the Conservatives wanting to ram this thing through and saying “damn the torpedoes”.
Mr. Chair, I'm addressing my comments through you to the parliamentary secretary. In the House, the Minister of International Trade stated that we should talk to the people who raise concerns about EFTA. He said, “They may have changed their minds”.
Our responsibility as a committee is to have those witnesses back and to see if they've changed their minds. That is something that the minister seemed to imply--that people have changed their minds about this agreement.
As a committee we need to do our due diligence and perform our fiduciary responsibility to the Canadian public, and that means having witnesses. That means the Conservatives, this minority Parliament, are going to have to understand that we're going to have to work through a witness list and do our job.
This motion is a good sense motion, and that's why I've seconded it. I think Mr. Brison is putting this forward, doing his due diligence as a member of this committee. To suggest that this committee has done its job on examining the legislation--I'm sorry, that has not happened. We've had one outside witness to date, in two Parliaments.
With respect, on the legislation itself, we have to do our job. That means interviewing witnesses and seeing what the implications of this agreement are.