Thank you, Chair.
When we first discussed Mr. Brock's motion on the need for a strong condemnation by this committee and by the House on child sexual exploitation and abuse materials, it was stemming from the Supreme Court decision that found mandatory minimums for child sexual abuse and exploitation material were cruel and unusual punishment. Since that meeting, I have had an outpouring of messages and emails and phone calls from constituents and people across the country who are very supportive of what we were trying to do with Mr. Brock's motion. This was then amended, and I proposed a subamendment. Central to this is that we believe this is not meant to be a sticky note that can be ignored and disregarded by the government. It is essential that the original intent of our motion, which is now living in my subamendment, that this be reported to the House, that that remains in place.
We had from the Liberal members a proposal that we could achieve this simply by sending a strongly worded letter to the Minister of Justice. I think the Minister of Justice has received many such strongly worded letters from constituents of his and from people across the country. He has chosen to disregard those. I do not believe that is adequate.
The importance of what we're trying to do is to give the House of Commons, all parliamentarians, the opportunity to weigh in on this discussion and to do what is the role and the right of all parliamentarians, which is to take the work of this small group that sits on the justice committee and, if we need to, have this debate in the House of Commons, especially since the government has not been forthright about what its plan is.
I realize that thanks in large part to procedural delays that have led us to only have 10 minutes to consider a subamendment, an amendment and the original motion we are not going to have time to deal with any of this in the meeting here.
I'm very mindful of the concerns raised earlier in this meeting by my colleague, Mr Fortin, about confusion surrounding what happens when a meeting is suspended and all of that. I will be, in a moment, moving to suspend this meeting and reconvene this discussion on Thursday at the next meeting of this committee, and to do so knowing full well that is what we are going to do.
The request I'll make before I move that motion, Mr. Chair, is that all members be given a proper amended notice in both official languages of what precisely will be happening on Thursday. If the goal is to proceed to witness testimony, I expect all members will receive adequate information about that. That is my request, and I think Mr. Fortin's concerns are entirely well founded and were preventable.
I would love to put this to a vote right now, but I do not believe, from what we've heard from my Liberal colleagues, that we will be able to dispatch all three motions right now. At this point, I'm moving to suspend so that we can reconvene and dispatch this properly on Thursday.
(Motion agreed to)