Let me respond.
The motion we had on Monday, or the direction I was given by the committee with agreement, is that we would invite the minister, and in her absence the parliamentary secretary, to join officials. That's what we did. We extended an invitation to the minister. We heard back that she was not available. We extended the invitation to the parliamentary secretary. We were told he was not available.
The invitation was made in good faith, as the committee asked me. I wasn't instructed to compel them to come. We invited them, and they weren't available. We said we would have departmental officials, and so we have many well-informed departmental officials here. I'm happy to hear their testimony and get into the discussion.
As we said on Monday, the minister has agreed that she will make herself available for the main estimates. We have that in writing, so there's agreement that she will be here for the mains. She was not able to come for the supps.
I think we had a brief discussion on Monday about the timing of this, because the supply day ended up being called for today, and so we won't be reporting back on these anyway. However, I still think we can have the conversation with the departmental officials about the intentions for these budgetary items that are before us. These have already essentially been deemed reported back to the House—they have gone back to the House as unreported.
That's where we are with the supps for today.