Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate a fellow British Columbian on both her electoral victory last fall and her speech and intervention today.
Obviously, there has been a lot of agreement in the House on this particular issue. I heard a number of times the Conservative as well as Liberal members raise this question. We all feel very strongly about the issue. We all want to seek a resolution, but the question is, why create a new committee rather than refer the issue to a current standing committee?
I have sat on the status of women committee. It has institutional knowledge. It has connections. The clerks will have at their disposal witness lists of stakeholders who could come forward. That particular committee can travel. The time, energy, and set of costs, as well as populating the new list of committee members required—we know that we have had some issues with getting our committees started—would slow down what is a very good measure. Therefore, why does the NDP persist in slowing down the process when we have a standing committee, in the status of women, that is ready to go and whose mandate this clearly falls under?