I just had a thought. I think most committees agree that there are times when we want witnesses present at the end of the table, but there are other times when we as a committee can take great advantage of the technology that's available to us, particularly when we're asking people to travel from one side of the country to the other. It depends on the study, obviously, but I think we've been able to use that technology with a lot of success. It's just a thought, and certainly as the clerks are reaching out to people, that might be something for them to know.
On the second part, I don't know about you, but I'm a visual person, and one of the challenges when witnesses come in is that we don't always get something to read, particularly in both languages. I know what our procedures say and I think we should always encourage them to have some sort of documentation. It may not be the full text of the speech, but even just the points are sometimes very beneficial to many of us, I would say. When people are talking without them, you can miss something that's key. Anyway, it's just a thought.
Mr. Chair, the procedures are in place, but quite honestly, in agriculture you're going to find that in some of the commodity organizations these guys are actual farmers who are coming out, and they don't have a large administrative operation or much access to translation. They can get it to us, but sometimes the timing, because of their schedules of work and planting and harvest or whatever, might be.... I don't know if we could allow asking for that even if we could have it.
I know that we need to have consensus, but I just leave that as a thought too, because I think we all want the committee to have as much information as possible. We understand the significance of both official languages, we really do. On the other hand, sometimes these folks just come forward and want to talk about their issues. It's very personal to them in their lives and in their business.
I'll just leave it at that point.