Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. At some point you people are going to ban me from having this book in which I write everything down, because I like to keep notes.
I'll take us back to May 17. By the way, this is not the first time a member of this committee has put forward that we should be talking to the people who are serving currently. When we debated the issue on the 17th, a decision was taken later on, the same decision we made last week. We were told over and over again that this is not our mandate; our mandate is not to talk to people who are serving. I disagree with that totally. And I disagreed with it at that point.
We won the vote back in May. We won the vote last week. Our job is to serve veterans. All those people who are wearing uniforms right now we will serve, and I think any opportunity to speak to them is important, whether it's here in Canada or overseas.
The issue with the motion--I agree with it. I spoke to Mr. Shipley last night. I think we should be going to some of the cities where some of the veterans are. Currently, we have a lot of them right here in this city alone that we could be talking to.
I'll also take you back to a comment Mr. Shipley just made about an evening with members and families. I'll draw back everybody's attention. That was a very poignant night in all our careers. It was an amazing night, but also it was with a lot of currently serving people. They were still in uniform. So it's our job, I believe--and I've said that right at the start of this committee--that we need to talk to the people in uniform.
We have no problem with this motion as long as this motion doesn't try to undo what we decided last week. That decision has been taken twice by the committee, and we were all under the impression that it was under way. It got changed for a number of reasons that you explained. Prorogation may have moved it right off the table. The decision has been made again. I have no problem participating. I think this is what we should be doing. But in light of that, it's what we should be doing after we fulfill the obligation we took last week in the meeting.
I'll remind everybody that there are qualifications to the decision we made last week, and it's part of the national security issue you mentioned. We're fully aware of that, and if you reread the motion from last week, you'll know that we need to have cooperation of one of the departments. This is a good idea. I think we should be doing more of this, but not until after we fulfill what we agreed to last week.
Thank you.