Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm not afraid of meeting with people. I've undertaken consultations across the country with the ministers—which are all public record, by the way, including the ones in Quebec—that were in a format very similar to this committee. As I said, there are over 8,000 submissions that were made. I'm sure members might be interested in seeing some of those.
I would like to propose that if this is what we want to do, if we want to meet with essentially everybody who came before us and said they'd like to appear before the committee, I'm fine with it. But I would like to get the committee to consider enhancing the meeting schedule of this committee so we can get through this in a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise it's a stalling tactic, and I don't think that's what we formed this committee for, to simply run it out, run the table, and see if we can prevent a copyright bill from ever being passed.
As much as artists are interested in this, there are a lot of wealth creators and job creators and investors who are looking to this bill and counting on us to pass it--people who will create jobs and people who currently employ people, who are counting on us to pass this legislation. We need to do that.
I am happy to meet with every person on the list, happy to add more people, but we need to have more meetings. It's the responsible thing to do.
I'd like to put a motion on the floor that we accept all witnesses, that we take additions. But I would like to see the committee meet either an additional two hours on Mondays and Wednesdays in the evenings, or on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 8:45 and 10:45, to accommodate the witness list in a reasonable amount of time.
I'd like that motion on the floor, Mr. Chair.