If I may, Mr. St-Pierre, I'm going to say this, and we can discuss this around the table.
By way of preliminary remarks, this committee has just been struck. Not everybody even had the motion in their hand beforehand. I appreciate the effort to do this. As you know, I was appointed chair under 24 hours ago, but I can tell you this: My goal is to get some of these deadlines confirmed when we leave today.
My only ask of the committee is really that.... We all share your view. We want to get this thing done efficiently. We all really share your view strongly. I know we'll make sure that we do it thoroughly and that everybody who wants and needs to be heard gets to be heard. If we can all work together and be collegial, which I know we can, we can accomplish this.
Having said that, because we have just started and because it was so quick, my concern is that if we set hard deadlines on all of these things today, we're going to box ourselves in and we're going to regret it. I can tell you now that the three lead ministers on this on this piece of legislation have confirmed their availability to attend on October 19 to start off our first meeting, which will be on the Monday following the Thanksgiving break week. I think that's important to get us started.
In terms of witness panels and deadlines, what I'm proposing—and I'm just throwing this out there in the context of the motion—is that we agree on a preliminary list of witnesses by the end of today, or sometime today—perhaps even immediately after this meeting is over—with another option to submit further witness lists by next week. This gives everybody a bit more time to absorb what we're doing and give it some thought.
In terms of the panels and whatnot, it's always a good idea...but in my experience, good intentions fall by the wayside very quickly, because you send out invitations to witnesses and some are not available and some cannot or do not want to attend, and you end up being unable to stick to that rigid process.
Those are some preliminary thoughts of mine. I appreciate the spirit. I don't want to get wedded to too much today, because when we come back—once we have a better idea—we can sort it out.
I'll give you the floor, Mr. Albas, and then I'll go to Mr. St-Pierre.