Thank you very much.
Mr. Harris, thank you for that clarification and for that very clear sign of respect for the spirit of the Official Languages Act.
I was discussing our responsibilities as parliamentarians. As I said, we must make sure that we carry out our role as openly as possible. The problems that this situation poses can in part be resolved by Mr. Harris' amendment.
If I have the time, we need to look at that again. The fact that we vote at the start of the meeting makes it possible to avoid delays. But given the current demographic make-up, there may still be some problems.
However, the true meaning is very important. Actually, we are including at least one member of the opposition in the decision-making process. It's that absence that we deplore the most within this committee. The fact is that the various steps we are trying to take and the various things we are trying to propose as official opposition, together with Mr. Bélanger who is very often here, frequently take a back seat. It becomes very difficult to discuss it.
If we want to be able to come forward with a certain opinion or a certain issue, we must make sure to have witnesses and to be able to talk with them. If we can't do that type of thing, we end up in camera. It's even more the case if we adopt a motion that forces us to go in camera as soon as we need to focus on committee work.
I realize that I wasn't very polite. I didn't welcome our Liberal colleague Mr. Pacetti, who is replacing Mr. Bélanger. You're arriving here on the Standing Committee on Official Languages at a very interesting point. This is a discussion that has very serious repercussions.
The meeting is currently taking place publicly. Unless things change, you will be able to keep up to date on the various decisions that we'll make. I hope that we will be able to continue openly with the discussion we're having. I think we're all feeling much more comfortable. We are according much more respect to the spirit of Canadian parliamentarism and our role as opposition. I hope that we will be able to continue this way and accomplish our work.
The official language minority communities have great expectations of us. The various witnesses that have come to see us in the past few months have very clearly expressed the importance of the work that we are doing here, of the direct influence that we can have on their community through our recommendations, the studies we undertake and the reports we produce. All of these actions and measures that we can adopt can really help them to realize their full potential.
In the study that was done on the north, among others, we were told repeatedly to what extent these people had been pleased with the visit by parliamentarians and truly hoped to see direct positive results from that visit. The committee would certainly be able to continue that study and really be able to produce a report.