If anybody wanted to look into when this motion was created, according to the metadata, it was at 5:12 p.m. It was last edited at 5:14 p.m. Mr. Cooper was still talking during that time and still had the opportunity to ask questions of the witness.
What this says to me and what the consistency of the actions of so many Conservatives who are sitting opposite me here today says to me is that this is not a question of privilege. This is a mockery. This is a mockery of our parliamentary system. They're trying to use the system to create their partisan games, to push witnesses into character assassinations and to leverage the time that we have in this committee for their own partisan benefit.
I wonder how many dollars the Conservatives have raised out of clips today. Those dollars, from Russian Rebel News, are being collected on the backs of taxpayers. Let all of us be reminded that this committee functions on the backs of taxpayer dollars. Our Parliament functions on the backs of taxpayer dollars.
We are here in the public accounts committee to make sure that taxpayer dollars are used efficiently and effectively. The fact that Mr. Perkins would move a motion of privilege—before there was any issue of the exact same thing that he's trying to talk about in his bogus motion here, that his privilege was somehow impacted—on the backs of taxpayer dollars, raising Conservative fundraising dollars on the backs of taxpayer dollars....
Why can we not get to the work that this committee has been assigned to do? Why can we not get to the reports of the Auditor General? Why can we not talk about matters that are serious and that actually impact Canadians?
I really don't understand, Chair, why we're going down this route. I see each and every member of the Conservatives right now on their phones. I'm sure that they're tweeting something or other, again to put—