Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, everyone.
It's great that we started the conversation with some clarification, because it helped ground the intervention I'm about to make.
The way I understood it, we started this study of TMX back in September with a focus on accountability. A report had come out that a project that was initially estimated to cost around $7.5 billion went to $34 billion, and we wanted to understand why and how. There are a lot of witnesses. I'm hoping the report will shed some light.
Why did we all agree, unanimously, to the report? It was because we were focusing on accountability. Traditionally, we look at the study, we agree on it, we come up with a list of witnesses, we send those lists of witness names, the witnesses come in and provide testimony, we ask questions and a report is put together. I'm not going to go through an iteration of versions one, two and three. A set of recommendations is then made and we send it to the government. We table it in the House and we ask for a response from the government.
One method of looking at accountability is the work we do in the committee. Another method is what we do in the House with debates. Mainly, we debate bills and legislation, but in the House, topics like this could be debated as part of an opposition day motion, a late show or a concurrence motion.
Given the fact that the House is in a gridlock and we don't have a dance partner who cares about Canadians, the opportunity to debate it as an opposition motion for the Bloc at this point isn't presenting itself. I understand that.
What are the alternatives? One alternative is the late show, but the late show is only about five or 10 minutes. It's not really going to give Mr. Simard the opportunity that he wants.
Alternatively, right now, we could move a concurrence motion. The debate is about three hours. You debate; this is really the objective.
On accountability, those are the paths we could go down. Based on what Mr. Simard has suggested, we are saying we're going to bypass the committee report for now. I'll come back to that.
When we go to the House, the only option the Bloc sees right now is moving a concurrence motion.
I understand the process and I understand the reason we want to do this.
What are we losing? By agreeing to the original motion that MP Simard brought, what we are doing, in my opinion, is moving away from accountability and into politics. Where we had an accountability agenda, now we are moving into a political agenda. This is where I have a fundamental issue, and that fundamental issue is that we are bypassing the process.