Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to take Mr. Jean's argument one step further. Obviously, labour has other means of communicating with the minister. They may feel they're not as effective as perhaps doing it through this council; however, if in fact the current stakeholders of the council feel it's helpful to have labour involved as a member of the council, it seems to me that this should be forthcoming from the members of council at this point in time. This motion, of course, compels or certainly recommends that the minister change the makeup of this council, to compel that there be a seat for labour.
My concern is this. If in fact the council welcomes the involvement of labour, we should hear about it from the current council members. They can confirm what Mr. Bell has already said, and everything is fine. We probably won't even need a motion.
However, if the council and the current stakeholders say there are things they would like to dialogue on and that such a dialogue would be hindered with the involvement of labour, at that point in time, even if we do appoint someone from labour to the council, the members of the council will likely say they have no need for this council, that they don't feel comfortable within it, and it will disappear on its own.
We're frustrating the process by moving ahead with a motion today. I would love to follow through on Mr. Bell's suggestion. It's his indication that in fact the current members of the council would welcome labour's involvement. If that's correct, we as a committee should know that. We can go ahead and vote for the motion if that's necessary. Likely, the minister would act unilaterally to do that because of the request from the current members.
With what we're doing here, we may be biting off our noses to spite our faces by actually imposing the will of this committee or the will of the minister on the council, when the council members may in fact say they don't welcome labour's involvement and are just going to walk away from the council altogether.
I would ask Mr. Julian to agree to deferral of this motion until we've had a chance to hear from the current council members.