Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Let me get straight to the point. I have good news: This morning, I'm going to propose an amendment to the original motion. I'd like to explain how we got to this point in this study.
We have taken a constructive approach. We even accepted a friendly amendment. As the chair just said, we added the Association des professionnels du dépannage du Québec as a witness. We're prepared to go all the way to make recommendations. We all agree on the same goal, which is to enable the clerk and the analysts to finish their work and produce a serious report with real recommendations.
The heart of the problem is really in the last part of the motion. We tried to move an amendment, which was defeated at the last meeting. As the chair just told us, this motion requires the committee and asks the transport, revenue and employment departments to provide, within 30 days—which I think is impossible—all correspondence, reports, emails and documents related to the issue of non-compliance in the trucking sector. It's an unrealistic request.
At the last meeting, we may have missed the opportunity to propose a motion for a number of reasons, including the fact that we didn't have the cost estimates. I still don't have them this morning, nor do I know the number of departments. I did a bit of research, and I believe it may be around six or seven departments, because there are regular exchanges between departments.
We can see that there really is a coalition between the Bloc Québécois and the Conservative Party, which are maintaining their position on the documents requested as evidence. After all the meetings we have had, we can now clearly see the political strategy behind this. It isn't complicated: They want to block the work. We have clearly seen that both parties have agreed to the same goal, which is to undermine the end of this study. They're even going so far as to share their speaking time to achieve the same goal.
I think that them politically promoting each other in that way made it possible to justify a fundraising campaign by the Conservative Party on the Bloc Québécois site. Imagine how they could coordinate that between themselves. We can see from our records that the Conservatives are really protecting the Bloc Québécois when it comes to how it's raising funds through a website.
This morning, I think the Bloc Québécois is becoming the victim of this whole thing. It's normal for the Conservatives to stick to their habits and turn snippets of news into false information. We're used to hearing the same slogans repeated over and over again to avoid the truth. That said, the coalition is making coordinated attacks against the chair. That's where we're at. In recent meetings, we have seen them go so far as to challenge the chair by inventing an excuse that there was speaking priority. The Bloc Québécois was dragged into that lie to prevent the Liberals from getting the floor.
The Bloc Québécois isn't in the habit of colluding with the Conservatives. However, we can now see that they are in fact doing so. Their tactic amounts to a direct attack on the functioning of the committee and on the chair.
On its website, the Bloc Québécois published an article claiming that the Liberals are refusing to hear from the victims, which is false. On the same page, the Bloc solicits political donations—they even admitted it—on the backs of bereaved families. We talked about this at the last meeting. It's simple: We have a culprit, but we're blaming someone else, someone who manages the site. However, if you go to the Bloc Québécois website today and click on the article, the first pop-up that appears is a request for donations of $5, $15, $20 or $25. This is still being done online. I wouldn't be here today talking about funding request pop-ups if they weren't there anymore. If the situation had been corrected, we'd be somewhere else.
The coalition prevented our proposed amendment from being moved, even though it was consistent with the terms of the original motion. I took the exact wording from the original motion. We made some concessions, but the Conservatives once again challenged the chair to rule the amendment out of order, which is completely false. Once again, the Bloc Québécois played along. It's as if it were now dependent on the Conservatives, as if the coalition were leading it to address the Conservatives' needs. No serious administration would agree to produce all these reports, all these emails, all existing documents related to non-compliance in the trucking sector. We would never endorse such an extreme request.
We're up against a complete lack of will to complete the study. The Bloc Québécois and the Conservative Party have no intention of finishing this study. The issue isn't the two meetings, because in all of our discussions, it has always been a matter of holding two meetings. We even proposed to meet with the witnesses from the bereaved families in camera, and the opposition deemed that out of order. It's as if there's no solution.
Are we going to have three, four meetings? Are we going to expand the list of witnesses and add amendments so that we can extend this study? We don't know the future, but one thing we do know is the goal. The goal isn't to restore road safety, but to block the end of this study.
A motion as broad as the one before us may violate the parliamentary principle of proportionality. According to parliamentary practice, a motion has to be proportional to the purpose. I'll explain it here. We're trying to understand a non-compliance problem in the trucking sector. That's what we want. We want to find out why drivers aren't complying with the rules, but we want to get a hold of all communications. We don't know why. It isn't even relevant. The committee is demanding non-targeted documents. This lack of targeting leads to unreasonable costs. We're talking about millions of dollars. It also becomes a tool for political obstruction or, quite simply, a tool for accountability.
We're in favour of transparency, but we oppose administrative overload that slows down action, costs taxpayers a lot of money and distracts the public service from the essential work it has to do to keep our roads safe.
This morning, we share the same goal: Achieve our objectives and draft a report. We want to make recommendations to help businesses, the other levels of government and the people in our ridings who testified about a serious issue that has been going on for quite some time.
Mr. Chair, I'd like to move an amendment.
I have to move it for me, for the good of Canadians and for the good of Canadian financial management. Before doing so, I believe it's necessary, even imperative, to clearly explain why this amendment is necessary today. It has to be said: If we want to respect this committee's mandate and prevent certain people from diverting our work from its true purpose, this amendment is essential. We can't leave room for the slightest doubt about the importance of returning to a serious, responsible process that's in line with what Canadians expect of us.
For that reason, I'm going to explain the reasons behind this amendment. I will keep my turn to speak immediately after moving the amendment so that I can tell you about it in more detail. I'd still like to justify my proposed amendment. My amendment seeks to amend the motion by replacing “since January 1, 2018”, after the word “industry”, with the following:
and that the Departments of Transport, Revenue, and Employment provide to the committee the total cost and time required to prepare and present these materials
I think it's very important to talk about the magnitude of the costs required for sound financial management. I would like to take a few minutes to send you this amendment in both official languages. I obviously worked on it in French, but I'd like to send it to you in English as well.
I would ask for two or three minutes so that we can get the document to everybody.