Thank you. I am ready to vote, so I will not take too much time. I simply wanted to say that I do not see what the problem is for the committee. It is entirely free to decide whether it wants to hear one witness a bit longer than another one. It is up to us to make that decision.
I agree with Brian. We always have to allow enough time for questions. I would also like all the members of the committee, including the Conservatives, to be of the same opinion when we have the minister appear for an hour. We always hope he will be with us for two hours, which would give us more time to ask him questions, but that never works.
Here we are asking to hear for 30 minutes someone who has prepared a report. This is not a whim on the part of someone who claims that 10 minutes is not enough for him. He has prepared a specific report on a file that we wish to discuss. Witnesses like that cannot be found on every street corner. Not all the witnesses who will appear will have done such an exhaustive job on the file we will be discussing. For some of them, 10 minutes will be plenty. Here we have an exception, no more nor less. Someone has prepared a report dealing specifically with a particular file. Obviously we want to talk about the pork sector and other red meat sectors. It is not because this report is about the beef sector in particular that these issues do not apply to the other sectors. We will talk about livestock in general.
I hope we will have the time to ask all our questions. This is half an hour out of a two-hour session. Do not tell me that it is impossible.
I will vote this way. Then, I would like us to settle the matter of the schedule, so that we can get down to work.