Madam Chair, I would like to speak to my motion.
When I brought this forward, it was in good faith, because in the past we've taken this process forward for bills of extreme importance. We had no idea at that time how many witnesses we were going to have. In order to give the witnesses who were concerned about this bill an ability to tell parliamentarians how it's going to affect them, I did make these recommendations.
I was extremely upset this morning when I read an article from CBC in regard to my motion. It was a matter of poor faith. I'm going to quote it because the Prime Minister quoted my motion. The reporter wrote, “A contentious motion Justin Trudeau characterized as a 'near miss' will come to a vote”. Trudeau said, “There are certain messages that could be passed to some parties that might be playing some challenging games around delaying NAFTA”.
First, I want to tell my Liberal colleagues how upsetting that is to read, when I was not even given the courtesy of being in the story. Second, the Liberals brought forward a very similar motion today. I want to read this into the record because it says how the Liberals were surprised. This comes from the House on February 6, when John Nater, one of our MPs, asked:
Mr. Speaker, when Bill C-4, an act to implement the agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States, is referred to committee, could the government commit to supporting a proposal at committee to have other committees, in addition to the trade committee, study the provisions of Bill C-4 and the impacts within their respective mandates in the same manner that budget bills have been considered at committee in recent years?
Now this is what the Liberal House leader said in the House, on record. Pablo Rodriguez said:
Mr. Speaker, the government is supportive of adopting the process that has been used in the past for budget implementation legislation. Under this process, the chair of the Standing Committee on International Trade would write to the other committees and invite them to do a subject matter review of the relevant provisions of the legislation, as long as the motion contains a fixed date and time for the start and end of clause-by-clause consideration of the bill.
That's basically what I was trying to achieve. The Prime Minister was aware of what the House leader said. I'm just curious, and maybe the parliamentary secretary can comment on this. Was the House leader trying to play politics here, or was the Prime Minister trying to play politics with this, because that certainly wasn't the intention from this side of the House?