Yes, he's questioning a procedural matter. It's a point of order.
If you give me a moment, I think I can discharge this to the member's satisfaction.
Number one, Mr. Goodyear read the same point about yesterday's adjournment, following our witnesses. Respectfully, sir, I didn't need to ask anybody to move a motion for adjournment, because all of the witnesses had been heard and there was no other business before the committee. That's what you do: you adjourn the meeting. So that takes care of that allegation.
With regard to this morning, I think Mr. Martin raised a very good point with regard to Mr. Finley, who came before his scheduled time. Mr. Martin indicated that when you have a witness, you have to properly prepare for a witness. Members had come prepared to question six scheduled witnesses, who were here and sitting at the table in a two-hour time slot. To then say, “Well, just make room for this person”, we couldn't do it. It was not respectful to the witnesses who had made an effort to communicate with us and agreed to be here voluntarily.
This morning we had scheduled four witnesses. All had been summonsed. None of them had given us any confirmation or any communication to indicate they would not be appearing. The members had to prepare for those four witnesses.
With witnesses not appearing, that is a matter that I hope, the committee will address on Thursday, as to how we might move forward on this with future meetings and future witnesses and business that the committee cares to deal with. However, at that point, with only four witnesses scheduled, no other business scheduled that we could deal with, the chair had no business to transact except to suspend until we had the witnesses coming at two o'clock. That was because there were no more witnesses to hear and we'd already dealt with the other matters that weren't already scheduled.
Finally, on the issue of closing statements, it's not a rule that you must have an opening statement and you must have a closing statement. The committee decides. I think—I think—I proposed with the first witnesses that that was the way we would proceed, and that was acceptable to the committee. And we're treating all the witnesses in the same fashion.
We have had closing statements, as you know, in the Mulroney-Schreiber hearings. All of the witnesses who appeared had that opportunity, so I think that answers your third point.
I take note. I want to look at the transcript again, all the words that you said, sir, to make sure I've answered them. I undertake to fully answer any other points you may have raised, but I did want to deal with those.
Thank you very much.