Mr. Speaker, I will say that I am bewildered but not entirely surprised. I suppose that some of the independent members, whose rights you sought to protect and the committee sought a process to protect, are now complaining of that. That is a paradox in itself.
I only wanted to rise at this point to respond immediately to two very narrow things. The first is my surprise at the Liberal deputy House leader's position, because it is entirely contrary to the position his party took at committee, where the Liberal finance critic said that he liked the parliamentary secretary's comments welcoming the independents to the committee because the Liberals welcomed the input of the independent members at that stage of their deliberations at committee. That view is a little bit different.
The other point I wanted to address very quickly was his concern that the problem with this process is that in the invitation to the independent members to participate, there was a deadline for them to submit amendments.
There is a deadline for every member of the committee, from all parties, to submit amendments. They are all constrained in exactly the same fashion, so there is no discrimination there. There is no disadvantage to the independent members in that regard. That argument is entirely without any foundation.
As I said, I may come back with more.