Very briefly, a number of members from all of the different parties have raised the actual substance of what the committee should be doing when we're hearing from witnesses. If my ears do not betray me, I think I actually heard that the three parties--and if we include the official opposition, four parties--are in agreement that this committee should be hearing witnesses on Bill C-27. That's my first point.
Secondly, while we would not call back the witnesses who were already heard by the special committee on Bill C-27 before the prorogation of Parliament, there could be the possibility of calling them back.
The third point is that given that there was already a list of potential witnesses prepared by the previous special committee on Bill C-27, and we already know which witnesses were heard, which were not, and which had declined, I would suggest that this committee use that list as a basis for our potential witnesses.
I would propose that this committee agree that it will work on the Bill C-27 portion of Bill C-2, that it will use the potential witness list prepared by the previous committee as its witness list, and that the testimony--the transcripts of the testimonies--of witnesses heard by the previous committee be deemed to be part of our transcripts and therefore can be used by the members to refer to, etc.
I haven't worked it all out, but substantially it will be that the work that was done by the previous committee be deemed to be part of this work. Therefore, we can go to the transcripts, we can refer to them in our debates, in our discussions, if necessary in proposed amendments, you name it, and if the committee feels that because Bill C-27 has been amended by the government and it's necessary to bring back the previous witnesses who have already testified, that could be a possibility as well. But I would suggest that rather than ask witnesses to come back, we propose that, unless they desire to come back, if they have comments on the government amendments to Bill C-27 found in Bill C-2, they make their views known on paper to the chair, through the clerk, and then to the members of the committee.