Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In listening to the parliamentary secretary, I'm not quite sure exactly what the position is here. It seems that not long ago, a week ago, in our discussions, the impression I got was that the government wanted to give me time to extend and have discussions on this bill. The next priority then would be to look at the report of the committee, which I thought was logical. We also thought we might inject one meeting in order to hear from the department. We then would move on and get all this completed. Now there's a complete reversal.
I just want to remind him of two things. First of all, it was first tabled on November 9, 2009, and then we had prorogation, thanks to his government. We had to retable it again in March 2010. During this time we did get into our report on young farmers. We did some travelling and had witnesses.
So, in effect, if it was such a priority for everybody, and especially this government, why did it not say, “We can't do that, we must do the legislation first, and then we'll move on to talk to young farmers and do our tour”?
In the spirit of cooperation, when it was brought up to look at the report on young farmers, I thought, well, we've got some time, let's do that, this is important, we need to get on the ground, we need to have those witnesses, and then we'll come back to the bill. We came back to the bill prior to leaving for the summer break, and then of course we had summer. So there are all these factors that play into the extensions.
If it were a simple matter of the bill being introduced and we need to do it in priority fashion, then this would have happened well before June. But for various reasons this committee chose to have some other priorities. And I agreed to that. I didn't insist on getting this bill through.
All I'm asking now is to give the democratic process its worth. Let's have these witnesses, both for and against the bill. Let democracy work. For every person who is against this bill, I can probably get two who are for it. We've had them—