Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the member opposite is a very devoted and hard-working member of our committee.
The report I am referring to, and I would say this to anyone watching, is the report of the majority. At the back of the report there are four different dissenting reports. It is the importance of this report which encouraged me to stand today. The purpose is not to close down discussion, but to continue proper discussion to carry through with the committee process which we just finished.
Our standing committee met for four or five months. Its report, after all that time, would be washed aside with the calling for an independent review.
We could spend today debating whether there should be an independent review before the report has been fully digested by HRDC and before the House of Commons has seen what sort of response there is to it, but that would not be fair to the committee process and the work which I do as chair. I do my best to be an independent chair. I am not some sort of political eunuch. I am here to defend the committee process. I am not here to say that we will not talk about this issue any more, but that things are in progress. The committee itself should revisit this issue.
This is a waste of the time of the House today and it would be a waste of the resources of the House of Commons to conduct yet another independent inquiry.
With respect to the HRDC employees, we called as many witnesses as we could. The vast majority were on the opposition lists. If I might say, personally, I have great concern for the stress which frontline, devoted HRDC employees in our communities have already experienced during the public hearings. That is one of the reasons I do not think we need another independent review. We should follow through fully with this process.