Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It is really nice to be here today and to have us all working collaboratively to get some work done on this legislation and to actually start to do our jobs. It's also nice that we are hearing from more than one or two members of this committee today.
I have a couple of questions about the subamendment that Mr. Waugh has brought forward.
First of all, I'm wondering whether or not it is necessary for us to do those meetings separately. That seems to me like a very big waste of time. If we could have one meeting for the ministers to come, that would be preferable, from my point of view. I feel that as we try to move forward with this, to hold three solid meetings aside for this seems excessive. It seems a bit—if I'm feeling cynical—like maybe a delay tactic, so I would be interested in hearing from Mr. Waugh, perhaps, about why he feels that there need to be three separate two-hour meetings.
The other question I have is that if the ministers aren't able to come next week, for example, would that mean that we would just completely stop the work we're undertaking within this committee? That seems problematic to me as well.
I'm wondering if the clerk, the analysts or anyone could provide some clarity on whether or not we could use unanimous consent to pass the original number 3 that Mr. Waugh had put forward and if that might be a way that we could get around this so that we could continue to do our work. We could continue to look at the legislation but also make sure that we are addressing the concerns that are being raised in Mr. Waugh's amendment.