Mr. Chair, thank you.
First of all, I have an observation. Nobody has moved an amendment. Nobody has put any other suggestions on the table by way of amendment. The only thing we've seen is a very protracted filibuster, one that I wasn't going to participate in yesterday, to be frank.
There seems to be a misunderstanding about the meaning of the word “democracy”. You talk about conferring upon the august authorities that somehow I have the opportunity to move this committee on my own. All they have to have the ability to do is to move a motion. As with any other democratic process, there is a majority vote, and that vote then decides what will happen. Now, that may not be your definition of majority, but it's the definition that most people use of democracy, that a majority vote is what ends up carrying the day.
I moved a motion. I said then that if given the opportunity—and I certainly say it now—I am open to discussing that. But don't expect my ideas to be the same as yours. And I do have certain concerns. One of the concerns I have is the notion that we bring one-off individuals. There is a chief of police from a major city who disagrees with every other chief of police from every other major city. The chiefs of police as an association and more than 90% of their membership have one position. Every single police association in the country, with the exception of Saskatchewan as the sole exception, is in favour of the registry. The one association that disagrees has an undecided opinion. It has not taken a position. One of its members has said one thing, others are saying another, and they haven't taken a formal position. So you have virtually every single police association in the country, if not every one; you have virtually every chief of police....
The point that I would make, simply put, is that if you're going to have police appear before the committee, it would make sense to have those who are representing an association or those who are representing a provincial or territorial association come and speak.
Now, there are 32 million individuals in Canada, all of whom I'm sure would like to be able to speak. But with all due respect, if I want to know the opinion of people in the parliamentary secretary's riding, we don't invite 100,000 people to the House of Commons to hear the opinion of people in his riding. We happen to ask the parliamentary secretary. We have a system of representative democracy, and in this system of representative democracy, groups represent other groups, and those are the ones we listen to.
So I have a fundamental problem with the notion of cherry-picking the person who has one particular point of view, and then holding it out somehow that there's some great dissent among the broader community. I think that's disingenuous in the extreme. It's a little like us having a debate on whether or not the Earth is flat and saying that we should have an equal number of people who believe that the Earth is round and an equal number of people who believe the Earth is flat.
Committee members are entitled to other opinions. I don't deny them that opportunity. But I would suggest that a great way of resolving this, if committee members have some great objection to the motion I presented, is that they have in their democratic capacities the ability to do something that none of them so far has done, and that is, move a motion to amend it.
There are two ways to deal with this, and it can be done expeditiously. We can have a vote on the motion, and it can be defeated and a new motion can be introduced. We can have amendments made to this motion until it's satisfactory to proceed with the vote. Alternative to all of those, we could have a filibuster with great throes of rhetoric and all kinds of ridiculous over-the-top, syrupy wording, which, by the way, isn't being reported or talked about anywhere except when Conservative members of Parliament rise in the House of Commons.
So I would suggest that rather than continuing this charade, we simply move whatever amendments committee members would like to see. That's the way this committee has always worked. That's the way, frankly, it should always work. I invite members, please, if they have ideas, if they have things they want to change, move them. If they don't like the motion, defeat it and present a new one. I'm willing to work with the committee, but instead of giving long rhetorical speeches, let's actually present some credible ideas.