Mr. Chair, generally, at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, we have always managed to “chew gum and walk at the same time”. Contrary to Mr. Lemieux, who says that we must deal only with the report, that we must set much time aside for the report, and that we could discuss less important subjects from time to time, I do not think that this kind of topic was ever discussed by the steering committee. On the contrary, these topics are...
I often repeat this because I believe that some members think that we come up with ideas out of nowhere, because we feel like discussing them or because we thought about them during the night. But that is not the case. It's because we have discussed things with farm producers, people from the agricultural environment, who told every one of us that they would like to discuss such and such a topic. This is the reason why we are submitting them. I think that we can do both at the same time.
The idea of providing for extra hearings, just in case the report needed more time for discussion, was because we wanted some flexibility. I believe that we will be able to make progress and maintain our schedule for the report along with the work agenda. We always try to plan for some flexibility so that the work can go forward, that's certain.