I think there's a major concern that's been expressed going forward, so it's no particular secret here. It's the fact that we have a CEPA review, which is a mandated thing. We've had witnesses in. That's pretty crucial, and it's a requirement for us to get it out. It's long overdue in terms of getting it out.
With due respect to the member, I don't know where he intends to go with this; this is kind of left off to the side. I think we should be prioritizing the CEPA review, then getting to his thing, if that's the will of the committee. We have simply far too much important business, and we have witnesses to call who are now on hold in respect of that. I think the Canadian public actually wants something practical, tangible, on the ground, in terms of the completed CEPA review. We should have the witnesses in and so on.
Now we're getting into something that's rather different altogether. In fact, as has been pointed out, it's not respectful of the government's bringing a bill forward that deals with a lot of these things. That's the nature of what the member is up to. I think it gets down to pure politics. The environment commissioner made the point well that the Kyoto targets were very difficult to keep. That was very plain. There have been members all around the House, from all sides of the House...in fact, one of the other members, Mr. Ignatieff, who I think is being supported by the member opposite, expressed grave concerns about whether we'd be able to reach those targets or not.
To me this is a lot of mischief when we had good work that we were on before. The minister now needs to come in at one point again. I just feel that for getting at the practical stuff, what we can do that's before us immediately, this deflects and distracts us from that and really takes us off in another direction entirely.
From my point, I want to be on the record to say that I think we should get back to prioritizing the CEPA review. That would meet with a lot of support in the public and certainly with those who have testified here over many meetings. Now we're not going to be able to complete that work and get a report out by the end of December, or by the deadline.
So I would suggest, Mr. Chair, that this particular mischief that the member is up to now is really not in the best interests of the Canadian public or the work that we've been mandated to do in the committee.