Maybe it's more of a point of clarification. I appreciate what Blake's trying to do. I agree that if the goal is to have Mr. Bains attend again within 14 days for one to two hours—I couldn't care less, but two hours—and then determine after those two hours whether his answers are sufficient and whether we're going to go around this merry-go-round again in terms of a privilege motion, I'm actually perfectly okay with that. However, there are a couple problems with the motion, as I see it, if we're going to get to that goal.
Number one is that it speaks the language of prevarication, which is to lie, to deliberately mislead or avoid the truth. That is pejorative in a motion like this when we're stipulating that he lied while attending today, which I think is inappropriate if we're trying to find some consensus.
The second part is that it says the committee would not report back to the House if the “committee agrees that he has answered the questions to its satisfaction”.
Here is the point of clarification that I genuinely don't know the answer to.
How do we determine that? Is it another full conversation like this, and there's a vote? Is it as long not one member says it's not to their satisfaction? Chair, you just said “credible”. “Credible” and “satisfactory” are two different things.
Again, if the goal is to bring Mr. Bains back within 14 days, have him answer questions for another two hours—although that's over and above the original two-hour allotment that we were getting, but fine—it would make more sense to me that we would simply agree to revisit the question of a privilege motion after the fact. We would have this full debate all over again, as opposed to trying to wordsmith a motion to say whether it's not to our satisfaction.
Could someone clarify for me what it means for it not to be to the committee's satisfaction? Is that a vote that we would take? Is that a number of members?
Can someone clarify that for me? Maybe we're closer on this than I think.