Thank you, Chair.
That's rather disappointing. I thought that was a rather reasonable amendment—not a reasoned amendment, but a reasonable amendment. That's fine. I'm not too worked up over it. The day is long, and much can be said on this original motion.
This now frees me up to speak to the entirety of this Liberal guillotine motion. Let me highlight a few points about this motion. There's a real effort here to prevent this committee from doing its work.
I did hear a heckle from my colleague about what a guillotine motion actually is. I think we don't use the term “guillotine motion” enough in the Canadian Parliament. It's far more common in the U.K. A guillotine motion is basically any motion that ends debate. It prevents Parliament or its committees from doing their work. We see that all the time in the House of Commons, with closure motions or time allocation motions. This is effectively what this is. It is a guillotine motion on steroids. It guillotines not only one particular study but multiple studies, and it prevents us from doing our work.
Mr. Stewart wishes to have a historical definition of guillotine. We'd have to go back to the French Revolution for that. Maybe at another time and in another place, we can have a more enlightened discussion on that.
To the motion at hand, I want to point out a few key challenges with this motion. First of all, we have point three, which says, “At the conclusion of the meeting on Report 1, ArriveCAN, no more meetings be conducted to hear from witnesses in relation to Report 1, ArriveCAN”.
It says, “no more meetings”. We're done. We're finished. We'll wipe our hands of it. Even if something else comes out in the media, even if there are some new issues and new things to decide, no, we are preventing ourselves from having any more meetings on ArriveCAN—period, full stop.
It's not as simple as something that we could potentially be agreeable to, such as that after that meeting we give drafting instructions. I think we could probably live with that, but no, it's a matter of there being no meetings to hear from witnesses.