Thank you.
You have the motion before you. Essentially, as you know, this is an attempt by the Liberal Party to have the budget bill subjected to closer scrutiny, in particular by the committees responsible for the statutes that have been directly affected. You would also know that since this committee was formed after the last election, we have not had any legislation come before it. There have been no changes proposed to any of the statutes for which we are responsible. So here we are, knowing that one of the things that we're supposed to do is to consider changes to the statutes falling within our jurisdiction, and the first time one of them comes along, that statute has not been sent to the committee. So I'm asking the committee basically to do the work for which it has been mandated.
You will note that the motion calls for the formation of a subcommittee, and that's specifically out of respect for Mr. Harris's motion that we examine the transformation agenda. That is very important work that we're now doing. By striking a subcommittee, that work can continue and we can proceed on a parallel track. We could strike a subcommittee of this group to examine the impacts of Bill C-38 at the same time as continuing with the important work we're doing here today. So the motion is not meant to derail the work of the committee but to do it in parallel.
That's the motion and that's the rationale for it. Thank you.