I'm amazed to hear Mr. Williams say that, when Mr. Sweet asked for unanimous consent to present a motion at the beginning of this hearing this morning, with a whole list of potential witnesses that he wanted to commend. He asked for the unanimous consent of this committee to allow him to present the motion. The committee gave him that consent. We then unanimously adopted that motion, which was a laudable motion, and we were thrilled and delighted that the Conservatives had finally come around to the thinking of the opposition parties, particularly the Liberal and the Bloc, that these witnesses needed to be lauded and honoured.
However, it is also clear parliamentary practice that even when Parliament is prorogued and committees are reconstituted, the newly reconstituted committees can, via a simple motion, look backwards at what their committee has been doing if the previous committee has not completed a particular study, and by a motion ensure that all of the transcripts, all of the testimony, all of the documents that were presented in a previous Parliament be accessible to the committee.
Therefore, this motion is not moot. It provides—should the Prime Minister move forward and actually prorogue Parliament—the newly constituted public accounts committee, when Parliament resumes, with the clear thinking of this committee as to how it wanted to go forward. That newly constituted committee would have the freedom to decide whether or not it wanted to follow the direction that the previous committee--