I actually appreciate the translation, and I assume they got it right.
Anyway, that said, when I expressed my agreement with Mr. Rodriguez to an extent, I wasn't saying we should open it up generally, wide open, that kind of thing. As we've mentioned, we have 214 witnesses. It wasn't a recorded vote, but obviously it was the Conservative members who voted to add more meetings and all three opposition parties opposed that. If we're not going to add meetings, we have to consolidate the list. If the opposition's position is that we're going to continue to have four hours of meetings every week and that we're going to hear from 214 witnesses now on the list, plus an untold number of new witnesses who might be added later, clearly there is no will on the part of the other parties to actually pass the legislation. They simply want to have an endless succession of meetings.
Clearly, it doesn't look as though we're going to make decisions today. We may get one meeting scheduled, or maybe two or three meetings scheduled, but I do hope that as we move forward members of the committee will consider either adding meetings or somehow consolidating this witness list, because we can't possibly do our job here and hear from 214-plus witnesses. That's going to be impossible, given the schedule we have right now, and actually pass any legislation.
I'm simply putting that forward. It seems it's a dead end for us here, those of us who actually want to pass legislation and feel we were elected to do that. It seems that's a bit of a dead end. But there is no way we can hear from 214-plus witnesses at four hours a week.