Chair, I'm certainly no constitutional authority, but we have to operate within rules no matter who the witnesses are or what the topic is.
The understanding I have is actually very similar to Mr. Christopherson's. If we are dealing with an issue here, it wouldn't matter what that issue is or whether we are prepared or not to deal with a motion; if that motion is presented in both languages during the period when we are dealing with that subject, that motion would be in order.
However, this motion brought forward today has nothing to do with our topic of conversation. We're not into an investigation, we're not interrogating witnesses, and we're not dealing with the subject, so it is not substantive to our discussion today and it is absolutely and unequivocally out of order.
Either we have a set of rules here that we follow or we don't, notwithstanding the issue. We are playing politics again here, and we have to get away from politicizing this committee. We have a set of rules. Let us follow them, because once we start going down this path, Chair, we have a very serious problem: this committee ceases to function when we do that.
Based on those terms and conditions, Mr. D'Amours is just not in order. It has nothing remotely to do consistent with the substantive discussion we're having here today, so how can it be presented without notice? It absolutely cannot be. It wouldn't matter what the topic is; we have to follow our rules of order, because otherwise this committee either ceases to function or just carries on in the paralysis that it has had for this last little while.
If you wonder why we're going to an election regardless of the positions of any of the parties and with this Parliament becoming pretty well dysfunctional, it's because of crap like this. We have to start dealing with reality.