Thank you, Chair.
I believe right now we have Mr. MacGregor's amendment on the floor, and I'd like to amend his amendment. I'm assuming everyone has the amendment from Mr. MacGregor, so I'm just going to read the changes that would be made.
After the words “subject to availability of witnesses,” it would read “schedule a meeting”, as opposed to “schedule any meetings”; remove the word “required”; after the words “Ottawa Police Service”, add the words “the week of February 21, 2022, or as soon as possible thereafter should any witnesses not be available that week”; and then remove the words “on either Wednesday, February 23 or Thursday, February 24”.
I'd like to speak to that, if I could. Changing it to “the week of February 21”, gives the chair the flexibility to ask these people, who are right now in the middle of an emergency, to come. Instead of being very specific on the dates, this would recognize that the committee wishes to have these witnesses come during a constituency week, which is not the norm.
As we all know, we've already passed a motion to have these witnesses appear, which the Liberals supported; we just didn't support the timing of that. However, I think we need to be able to give the chair flexibility. The reason for adding the words “as soon as possible thereafter should any witnesses not be available that week” is that it would still honour the spirit of the motion that Mr. MacGregor put forward that these witnesses appear as soon as possible.
I also think changing it to “a meeting” is sufficient, and should anyone not be able to appear next week, we would still be able to call them as soon as possible. If you recall, Mr. MacGregor's motion, which passed, asked for witnesses to come as soon as possible.
I think we all have confidence in our chair that he understands the motion and will fulfill the wishes of this committee. I think this just gives him the flexibility and also allows all of these folks—the RCMP, the OPP and the Ottawa Police Service—right now who are dealing with an emergency in our country. We have, just today, started debate on the motion to implement the Emergencies Act. It's extremely important that we build flexibility into this motion.
Thank you.