Mr. Chair, I would just like to add my voice to that of Chris. I think I said it a little while ago. It's kind of funny to be agreeing with the Conservatives so much.
How committee used to work is we tried to find consensus on a lot of issues. We used to have great studies at ag committee and we were able to produce reports and recommendations for the minister. The minister would come in and meet with us quite often. I really thought that after the election we would get along and we would find consensus at committee, but that's something we haven't been able to find at committee, sadly, after a few months.
I was happy that we were able to look at diafiltered milk and talk about milk proteins at committee, but they were two short meetings. We could have written a report and sent it to the House.
We have witnesses here and I'm sorry they haven't had a chance to speak yet.
I just want to reiterate the importance that we do maybe look at other subjects that are more important and more pressing, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I've said it before and I'll say it again: consulting Canadians is important. This is an important trade deal. It's vast, thousands of pages, and it does impact the ag industry, and having an in-depth study on that with recommendations to Parliament would be important. Tomorrow we're going to be looking at milk proteins in the House of Commons and eventually we'll have to vote on my motion dealing with milk proteins and applying the rules already in place.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is important. Yes, the international trade committee is travelling and it is doing consultations, but the ag piece is really important. We could hear from different commodity groups. I do think we had a really great meeting earlier this week. I can't wait to hear the testimony from the witnesses we have today.
I think Chris mentioned also the importance of looking at grain transport. Bev and I were on the same committee when we were looking at C-30. We know how important it was for all parties to get consensus and work on making that piece of legislation the best it could be. The NDP put forward quite a few recommendations. Some of the provisions, four provisions, will be sunsetting on August 1. I think all of us have heard from different stakeholders about the importance of making sure that some of those provisions do not sunset. They're going to be going fast, right? We're getting into crazy season. We've seen it today, with votes occurring in the middle of a committee meeting. It's only going to get worse in May and June, with time allocation and pushing forward certain bills that need to be dealt with before we leave for the summer.
Grain transport was something that, on this side at least, we really wanted to have dealt with at committee, have witnesses come and talk about the importance of keeping some of those provisions and making sure that the government gets recommendations from this committee, because it will take an Order in Council and then it will take a motion in the House. We have lists of people and groups that would want to come in and talk about how they were negatively impacted a few years ago and talk about maybe infrastructure investments that could be done to make sure that rail is moving and people are on a level playing field when it comes to grain transport and the transport of all commodities.
It's frustrating and it saddens me a little bit to see that we've made it to this point, and Growing Forward, we will look at that. The committee did look at that, Growing Forward 2, in the past. We spent a few weeks at least—I could probably ask the analysts how long we actually spent on it—but we had great witnesses come in and we submitted recommendations. But we're not getting much clarity from you right now on what that'll look like and we don't have much information on what the structure will look like for Growing Forward 3. There are so many issues that we need to be dealing with instead of Growing Forward right now. There is grain transport. There is the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Chris talked about busywork. I saw a lot of busywork in other committees. I know what it smells like and looks like, and this kind of smells like that.