Mr. Easter won the draw on who goes first here, but I have to echo everything he said: we did try to have a discussion about whether it was proper, in terms of good governance and good management of legislation, to proceed in this very rapid fashion with a bill that clearly has flaws in it, as indicated by the number of amendments proposed by the government to a private member's bill.
I feel the same. I had the transcript of the testimony just about 24 hours before this meeting, and not in both official languages, in which witnesses made suggestions for amendments that they thought were necessary to the bill. There was absolutely no time to make sure we could do due diligence in drafting amendments that might have reflected the sentiments presented by the witnesses. I am disappointed that we don't have a discussion of committee business first so that we could have some discussion about when it might be appropriate to move forward on the bill.
I have concerns that not only have we not heard from the Parole Board, but we haven't really heard from Public Safety, and with this many amendments coming in to this bill I have the same question Mr. Easter raised. Does this mean that Public Safety Canada or the Minister of Justice have suggested these amendments? If so, we need to have heard from them as a committee before we proceed to deal with amendments to the bill.
I am very concerned about the idea that we're going to try to proceed today in the absence of the information we really need to have in order to make sure that we have good legislation in front of us.
I'll wait for another chance.