One of the great advantages of having the parliamentary secretary on the steering committee is that he can convey to the committee the government's reaction to certain pieces of legislation, as well as how much time they wish to spend on them. So having him here helps us to know what the government's intentions are.
If the parliamentary secretary is saying that we may require extra time to discuss Bill C-377 and we can't do that today, an alternative strategy would be to schedule an extra meeting tomorrow to complete the task. That way we can maintain the schedule the steering committee agreed to. We may not even get to that point, because we don't know what's going to happen today, but we could use that as our safety valve and keep to the schedule for witnesses who have been lined up.