Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I hope that after what we've just heard from Mr. Jean, any further questioning of relevance will be immediately discarded. Because some of these things are about as relevant as he was claiming a moment ago that others were not.
For instance, on the matter of no report, I've quoted the minister's words often enough, and I'll do so again. The last sentence there says, “but we”—as in the royal we for the government—“will be advising the House as to what we want to do in the coming days”. This was in reference to the remailing matter.
That is a commitment on behalf of the government to come back to the House, in whichever way—in a speech, in a report, in an announcement—as to what it intends to do, in the coming days, and that was a year ago. So when we hear that there is no report, that may be accurate, but there is a commitment to advise the House.
Then what happened is that we got a motion coming from a government member to amend the law—to cut, change, modify, amputate the privilege—without having had the benefit of whatever it is the government has been doing in that past year.
Furthermore, on Monday, at this very committee, we found out that the minister and the government are thinking of a review of Canada Post, and not just on the remailers, but I believe—and I'd have to verify the committee Hansard—the minister may have mentioned that the matter of remailers might be included in that review. I'd have to verify if my recollection is accurate in terms of what the minister actually specified; he listed two or three things that he would do. But the fact that the minister and the government are considering a review would delay this even longer if he's planning to use the review, with whatever format it might take, before dealing with the remailers matter.
So we've had a situation here for a year in which the government, the minister, having given a commitment to come back to the House advising the House as to what we want to do in the coming days—for a year now—and having reconfirmed that in the fall through another question in the House—And we still don't have that. And now, all of a sudden, we may be facing a review of Canada Post, which may take—We'll all agree, I would hope, that these things take months, if not years. But certainly it's not done in a matter of days or weeks, especially since the review, if it's going to happen, has not even been triggered yet.
In the meantime, my colleagues—and rightfully so—are concerned about what might happen to remailers if Canada Post insists on having its privilege respected, as the courts have ruled in the past months.
Can the government act? Yes, the government can act. Does the government need the permission or even the prompting of a committee? Hopefully it shouldn't. And it can. The minister has every ability in the law to take action to talk to Canada Post, but not by seeking this committee's endorsement for amendments to the law.
That's where this whole thing started, because the initial motion that is on the floor is Mr. Fast's motion. So let's keep that in mind when we're talking about what we're addressing here.
As a matter of fact, I might ask, as a bit of a procedural matter here, would it not have been different, Mr. Chairman, if the motion introduced by my colleague Mr. Volpe had been ruled as a substitute motion instead of an amendment? Because, in effect, that's really what it is. I don't know if we—