Thank you. I do appreciate the opportunity.
What we'll find is that ministers always have things to do, so “earliest convenience” may mean next year. What we do note also is that ministers in other departments have made themselves available to their committees. As a matter of fact, the Minister of Finance has been before his committee. Quite frankly, the finance minister is a lot busier than the agriculture minister these days, so we appreciate the fact that he did show up. Ministers, traditionally, do show up, especially when they're first appointed, to speak to their parliamentary colleagues.
There's a demonstration of some contempt by the minister not giving any indication of a date on which he would speak with his parliamentary colleagues on the record. It is contempt. It's looking like contempt for this committee, and for Parliament as an extension.
We don't want to go down that path. It would be helpful for the minister to be in contact with committee members to let us know when he would make himself available. We don't like to send letters. We don't like to demand that ministers come, but from time to time, when ministers decide not to be engaged with the committee and not to respond to requests from the committee, we do have to get a little bit more aggressive in our language.
I'm not certain that at this point we should leave it to his earliest convenience, in that he didn't have the respect for the committee to even indicate when he would make himself available upon the first request. We will stand by our desire to see him within short order. If the minister all of a sudden makes himself available in due time, we'll respect that he intended to do that and that there was simply a miscommunication with the committee.
However, as it stands now, to communicate that you're not going to....From what we understand, the minister has not made himself available. He didn't give you a date for which he could be available. At some point, we as a committee have a responsibility to our constituents and to the agricultural community across this country to demand that the minister does come.