Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for York—Simcoe for making a great contribution to the debate, talking about the arms trade business, its contribution to Canada, and the jobs it has created. While that is important, I personally want to speak to the details in the motion, from a more procedural perspective.
I have been sitting here all morning and into the afternoon listening to the Liberals and New Democrats talk about the arms business, arms trade, the Arms Trade Treaty, human rights, completely avoiding talking about the contents of the motion, which is whether the House should have another standing committee to discuss a specific issue that was actually already dealt with by the foreign affairs committee. To their everlasting shame, the Liberals voted down the creation of a subcommittee to deal with this issue, so we would not have to be here for a day debating whether a full standing committee should be established to deal with it.
As I have done before, I want to use a Yiddish proverb. It is good to poke the fire with somebody else's hands. The New Democrats are poking the Liberal fire on this. Do we need another standing committee to deal with the Arms Trade Treaty and arms trade? I do not think so. I respect the New Democrats' position. I respect the fact that they believe this is an important enough issue that it is worthy of having its own standing committee of the House to deal with it. I disagree with that intent, so I will be voting against the motion.
Procedurally speaking, having another committee and requiring extra work to be put into it in terms of staff, analysts, translators, clerks, and all the people required to make a committee function, I simply do not believe is necessary. I think it could have been dealt with very easily by a subcommittee that could have started the study immediately. I have heard Liberals saying that eventually, some day in the future perhaps, they will look at this. The committee intends to look at it at some point, so why not start now with a subcommittee?
I have asked different Liberal members several times—by happenstance, one of them was actually a sitting member of the foreign affairs committee—why they voted against it. I did not get an answer, unfortunately. The policy question of whether the arms trade business is going on and what exactly we are doing is all worthy of discussion at the committee level. To address whether there would be sufficient confidentiality, sufficient secrecy, they could hold all of the meetings in camera. The committee could hold them behind closed doors if there is an issue of confidentiality. We have the means to keep information secret.
The careful stewardship of the financial resources of Parliament is important because it is paid for by the taxpayers of Canada. I personally do not believe we need another standing committee. I believe we already have too many standing committees doing work and having debates that could take place in the chamber instead of at the committee level.
Again, it is a question of workload, as I said, taxing the analysts, the clerks, the translators, the scheduling involved, the different members who would be assigned to it. Perhaps they would even start travelling. I know the Liberals are very fond of committees travelling to different parts of the country to see, on the ground, exactly what is going on and maybe a little extra.