Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.
First, I have to put on the record a protest. I'm only here because of a motion passed by this committee at the beginning of its work in 2015. I objected to this motion at the time. It was one invented under the previous government to deny me my rights at report stage.
It's a clever piece of work to claim that since committees are the masters of their own process.... When every committee passes an identical motion that affects any member of Parliament who is not in a recognized party to say that they will be invited to committee, the effect of that is to eliminate my rights, which exist under our Standing Orders, to present my amendments at report stage. Now that I have the opportunity to present them at committee, I no longer have the right to present substantive amendments at report stage.
My protest on the record is this. The motion you passed said that I must have 48 hours' notice, that I will be given 48 hours' notice to prepare amendments before clause-by-clause study. In this instance, we received the notice on Tuesday at 2 p.m. to have amendments prepared and submitted by Wednesday at 5 p.m., which is substantially less than 48 hours.
I mention this because since I'm not a member of the committee, all my amendments are deemed to have been submitted. I'm not allowed to vote on them. I am allowed to speak to them briefly, and I'm bearing that in mind. I just want to explain that I may try in report stage to submit additional amendments because the time of the notice was insufficient, even by the onerous provisions—and they are onerous, to me—of the motion by this committee and every other committee. It's astonishing when you consider that each individual committee is the master of its own process. The synchronicity of identical amendments is astonishing.
However, I'll pass over that and just say that I wanted to make it clear on the record that I did not have adequate notice to propose more than the four amendments I bring to you now.