Finance committee  I challenge the chair then.

Finance committee  Not at all. The point is that this is not the person who is supposed to be here to be accountable. It's supposed to be the minister. The bottom line is that the idea of taking those two out.... There were obviously efforts made by my colleague in the NDP to try to do that in some kind of co-operative way.

Finance committee  I think I will actually be looking to move a subamendment, but I want to speak to the amendment first. Then I will maybe move that, and we can discuss it. I'm sure some of my other colleagues will want to chime in on the subamendment at that point. I will allow them that opportunity then, but I want to speak to this before I do that.

Finance committee  Mr. McCauley, who discovered it, is a very diligent member of Parliament. Those are the kinds of opportunities we need to give for there to be these things when there are errors. We've seen a multitude of them from this government over the last few years, so there's certainly lots of precedent to believe that there would be more errors and mistakes, and we need to have the opportunity to comb through things for those and to properly question and make sure there are accountability measures built into them.

Finance committee  Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for being here. I appreciate the eloquence with which you all spoke very passionately about issues that are obviously very much matters of conviction for you. The same goes for the previous panel. I didn't get a chance to talk to you directly.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, again, I want to state very clearly at the beginning that this is not, as I said initially, in any way meant to be an attack on you or anything else, and is not in any way a judgment on your reasons for adjourning the meeting or anything else. I guess the question that I had related not so much to the reasons for your decision to adjourn the meeting, but more whether there was an ability to adjourn the meeting given that it was suspended.

Finance committee  I'm not trying to belabour this; I don't want to go into a prolonged debate by any means, Mr. Chair. I'll make a suggestion. I don't want to dispute any of the facts and I don't want to call into question your decision in any way, but what I do want to do is make sure we're not setting a precedent for something we may not want to do.

Finance committee  Do you know whether Madagascar has a carbon tax plan?

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, you need to allow them to answer the question so you can see....

Finance committee  Well it does, Mr. Chair. If you allow them to answer the question, I can continue to show you.

Finance committee  Well, I appreciate that, Mr. Chair. I thought maybe the member opposite was going to get in her point of order to indicate what her meeting was about when she met with SNC-Lavalin. Anyway, maybe the officials could endeavour to go back to those who work in their department to find out what it was that those meetings were about and get back to the committee on it.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I don't believe you are trying to be an impartial chair at this point. I think maybe it's best that—

Finance committee  That's just fine. I'm asking the questions right now, and you certainly aren't, Mr. Chair, so thank you for your interruption.

Finance committee  Thank you. That's appreciated.

Finance committee  Hopefully we can find out what the other meetings were about, and hopefully maybe the Prime Minister will choose to follow the example of the member who just gave an answer, because he certainly seems to want to avoid answering all the questions about what his dealings have been in regard to the former attorney general, so that's interesting.