Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you, Mr. Rousseau.
Mr. Bonnett, you've talked about lengthening the period of time to look at impacts of this and how we would roll it out. I understand that your expertise lies elsewhere, as an individual farmer. But overall, when one is laying out that timeframe....
And by the way, I agree with you on the timeframe. To remind folks, the working group to establish Bill C-18 was convened in July of 2011, with a mandate to be finished by mid-September 2011. So basically it was allowed two months to bring disparate viewpoints together, supposedly. One can argue that maybe the disparate viewpoints didn't get to that particular working group, for whatever reason. There are many reasons why that happened.
But one would have thought that if you wanted a working group to think about what we should do and how we go forward.... What sort of timeline do you see for that working group, going forward, to then think about another timeline as to what you should do if you were going to implement it? Are two months satisfactory to simply say, here is how we're going to affect tens of thousands of folks? I'm not judging, positively or negatively. We're talking about tens of thousands of farmers across the Prairies who will be affected by this, and within two months, the working document will come together and we will go forward.
What sort of timeline would you see in your mind, if you were allowed to set out a timeline, Mr. Bonnett?