No, it's not my own rule. It was a rule established by the committee.
As long as the Bloc members are okay with the understanding that the minister would like to come. Don't come later and say that the minister hasn't come when you've asked him to come, because the minister has offered to come and appear before the committee. My understanding is that it could be next Monday, or we could rearrange the schedule to be here next Wednesday. But beyond that, if you're not prepared to hear the motion and vote on the motion, then don't come back later and complain that the minister hasn't appeared before committee. I do believe you've got a number of issues you'd like to raise with the minister, and he would be prepared to take those questions.
When I moved the motion, I did remove the words “for one hour” when I read it earlier. But that said, if you're not prepared to hear the motion now, in fact I probably won't table it again on Wednesday because we're past the timeline that we've established and I'll have to go back to the department and determine when the minister could appear. At that point, we'll probably be into a study and it will be up to us when we'd like the minister to appear, and then we'll be into talking to officials about when his schedule would permit.
So the question is, if you would like the minister to be here, then I need unanimous consent to waive it. If you don't want the minister to appear right now and defer that until some later date, whenever that will be, that's fine. You just have to understand the consequences of not allowing the motion to be tabled, that's all.