Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Just to the conditional discussion of prospective further amendments, I'm very open to having discussions about amendments to this motion. I agree with Mr. Bergeron that we should move this forward. Respectfully, this isn't a question of a substantive issue or study. This is a question of an operating procedure for the committee, which is the item we're discussing right now.
I want to maybe respond to some of the things Mr. Oliphant said. The issue around whether Standing Order 106(4) applies was a question of debate, and to be fair, a point of disagreement between folks on this committee before, because it was the Conservatives who wrote the motion that created this committee. In it, we said the powers of a regular standing committee would apply to this committee. In our minds, that included Standing Order 106(4). Therefore, it's not a question of whether the Standing Orders intended something or other. We were the ones who wrote the motion and what we intended was for Standing Order 106(4) to apply.
However, subsequent to that, you had suggested that you had a different interpretation of the motion that created it. What I'm trying to do is insert clarity into a place where there wasn't clarity before, to say in regard to a standing order that, as I can say as one of the people involved in drafting the original motion, it was the intention of the drafters of the motion that created this committee for Standing Order 106(4) to apply as it applies with every other standing committee. That was the intention. There was a certain interpretation about whether it was written in a way such that it applies.
It's not a question of needing to get the House's permission. The committee has a right to pass motions with respect to how it schedules meetings. We can have a conversation about whether the number of members or the formula is exactly right, but the need for this motion is that, with all due respect to our chair, whom we all have a great deal of respect for, there should be a mechanism in the rules that allows members of committees to convene a meeting of the committee if there is a period of time during which the chair is deciding not to convene a committee.
In the absence of Standing Order 106(4), a chair could decide not to convene a committee meeting even when a majority of the committee wants to see that meeting convened. Certainly Standing Order 106(4) was used significantly previously on other committees to convene important studies around systemic racism and around a range of other issues at other committees.
I think it's important. We can discuss the particulars of the procedure, but it's important that we, at this opening meeting, put in place a procedure that allows a group of members of the committee to summon a committee to meet and proceed with its work.
I suggest that means we vote down Mr. Oliphant's motion.