Again, maybe I was so surprised by the four-hour proposal that I responded in a way that.... Maybe I could have been more careful in choosing my words, but it is frustrating. Four hours a week for this legislation, I mean....
Charlie, you've had time to study it. I think it has been out there. That was kind of the whole point. It has been out there. We had consultations a year and a half ago. The legislation has been there for people to study, to look at, to come to positions and to present ideas on, and to be ready for this committee. You've had a lot of time to study it.
As for coming forward with four hours, quite honestly, that proposal was entirely unexpected, at least by me. I did not expect to come here today and have all three parties line up and present four hours a week as a schedule for studying this. Quite honestly, when we put it to a legislative committee, I expected that we would actually roll up our sleeves and work at this.
Yes, we want to hear from witnesses. We want to take the time to carefully consider everything, but as amended right now, we're talking about 14 hours a week. That's not a lot of time to hear from witnesses. We've all done that before. Should we need to move meetings around once or twice during the course of the schedule to accommodate one of the four parties' Christmas parties or something like that, surely we can do that if we need to and still meet the 14 hours a week that we have in this amended schedule.
It gives us a lot of time to do the reading we need to do and to follow up on the things we need to follow up on. It's a three-week period. We're not talking about doing this for months and months on end. It's a three-week period. Again, I think this is eminently reasonable. It's for five hours a couple of days a week and for only two hours on the other two days a week. It's not that difficult.
There is a reality to our circumstance right now in a minority Parliament. Let's face it. There is a real chance--we're beyond two years now--that Parliament may end and we may go to another election before this legislation passes. I think it's incumbent on all of us in all four parties to make sure that doesn't happen, to make sure we give this legislation every chance to actually pass and move through before that happens. There are a lot of realities to minority parliaments. It's the world we live in right now and I think we have to adapt ourselves to ensure that we're responsible in passing legislation that we all know is important.
Again, you have the same list of stakeholders that we have, and you've heard from those stakeholders how important this is. We have to get down to work on it. This 14 hours is not too heavy a schedule. We've all done it before.