I have a couple of points.
First, in drafting this motion, I canvassed a number of members of the committee, and it was clear that members did not want to sit during constituency weeks. I'm happy to sit during constituency weeks. I think there are lots of House resources available during constituency weeks, so my initial proposal was that we sit twice a week during constituency weeks to deal with this matter because the House calendar this spring is so full of constituency weeks. However, members weren't in favour of that, so I took that into consideration in the drafting of the motion so that we would sit as a committee only during sitting weeks.
The second factor in all of this, Mr. Chair, is that if this motion is adopted, we will be calling nine witnesses to appear. Two of them are ministers. Ministers are normally accorded a full meeting. They normally appear alone as a witness. They don't appear with the witnesses enumerated in (i) through (vii) in the motion. That means two meetings would already be gone from the meetings we need.
In addition, we have seven departmental witnesses. That will take at least three, if not four, meetings. What we need for this study, Mr. Chair, is not two meetings; it's five meetings. That is in accordance with the amendment that was just adopted of “at least two meetings”, but two meetings is not going to be sufficient to hear from all the witnesses.
Just to get through the departmental security officer, the deputy minister of health, the vice-president of PHAC, the second vice-president of PHAC, the president of PHAC, the director of CSIS and the national security and intelligence adviser is going to take at least three meetings, because you're not going to have a panel of four or five witnesses in front of this committee on such an important matter. We need to hear from panels of one or two witnesses, so that means it's going to take at least three meetings to get through these seven witnesses from PHAC, PCO and CSIS. There will be probably two panels for PHAC, one panel for the director of CSIS and one panel for the national security and intelligence adviser.
Right there we're going to need four meetings. In addition to that, we have the two ministers who are being asked to appear. We're looking at five meetings, and if we stick to once a week, we're not going to be able to dispose of the business of the committee before we adjourn for the summer. That's why I think we should stick with meeting twice a week. Doing that would allow us to get through this study, to hear from witnesses and to also dispose of other matters in front of the committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.