I'm trying to understand, Mr. Chairman, why we would ever do that, what the benefit is when we have the written report, not only the summary but the extended report, and then have someone come in and give us a half-hour power point to tell us what's in the report, without his coming--or whoever's going to make that presentation--in the 10 minutes that are allotted to everyone. That's not to take away from this report or, quite honestly, other reports that those individuals will see are just as important as this.
You have to remember that this is one organization's report. If we wanted to have any of the other farm organizations--and I'm sure the cattlemen or the dairy producers or whoever we're studying at the time would say they have a half-hour presentation, because this has WTO implications; it has implications not only across Canada but across the United States and Europe. I guess that report then...maybe it should get three-quarters of an hour. Quite honestly, I think that any organization--and there may be some I would like to have come in and spend longer--but for the three years I've been on committees we've had some pretty significant reports done by professional people--and I'm not talking about lobbyists but professional people in their business. They can do it in 10 minutes, and then the best benefit comes in taking those reports and having the questions that come from all of us.
If we're going to take half an hour, by the time we've run through it, the only ones we're going to get, the ranchers or whoever's going to come, the one or two... And I agree with Mr. Storseth. I don't like having six or seven or eight, because you really don't get what this committee can benefit from if you have that many. I certainly couldn't support having an organization, regardless of who it is, come in and give us a 30-minute overview when we already have the executive summary in front of us now and the full report in our offices. It just doesn't make sense to me.