Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have two points to raise. First, to follow up on what I was talking about earlier, I see redundancy here. I don't see, again with great respect, how this particular amendment to Mr. McCauley's motion changes the substance of his motion in such a way that it would be worthy of all the time we've given to debating it. I don't see it.
I also see the bigger problem, and we'll get into it, I'm sure, whenever we get past this particular debate. There are an enormous number of problems with Mr. McCauley's motion, particularly in the way it would compromise the position of public servants, in this case at the Canada Revenue Agency. We heard very lengthy testimony on the part of the commissioner of the CRA, along with other senior officials, on the importance of the privacy provisions of the Income Tax Act. Our colleague from the Bloc has passionately shared with us why this amendment is so critical, but at no point have I heard her say how she feels about what was raised in that particular meeting with respect to privacy and whether or not what Mr. McCauley has called for compromises that, as I believe it does. Now, if she were to raise that here, you might call her out of order, because it's not directly on her amendment, but I still want to hear her point of view on that eventually.
I go back to the first argument, and this is entirely in order. Where is the relevance of this particular amendment in terms of the overall motion? I see it as being redundant, and I don't know how it gets us any further in terms of this committee's work. We did agree to two meetings to study the issue at hand, the Trudeau Foundation, and the Canada Revenue Agency was brought in. We've done a lot of work on that so far. I thought it was valuable to hear the position and concerns of the CRA.
Perhaps opposition colleagues were not satisfied. They seem to have been spinning their tires a bit and not able to get answers or, dare I say, provide material for things like question period, among other things. The CRA is certainly limited in what it can say about the status and the situation of particular charities. The issue on that day was not politicized, and it should not be politicized, but we continue to see a situation here where the Bloc and the Conservatives are aligning to take this issue and put it at the front and centre of the agenda of this committee.
I don't see it as appropriate. I had the list in front of me a minute ago, and it was on future work of this committee. There were a number of very important issues to be dealt with, including the consideration of draft reports. I know we will be hopefully getting into that later today, Mr. Chair. There are a number of important subjects that we have in front of us, including, I believe, testimony from Correctional Service Canada, understanding the situation in prisons, and following up and putting forward a report on that.
This is critical work. Again, we don't advance the objectives of this committee by pursuing, with all due respect, amendments that are redundant.
I just wanted to put that on the record, Mr. Chair.