Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the hard work that the subcommittee has done on the schedule. Generally speaking, I feel satisfied with it. I do have a couple of concerns that I'll just raise for consideration.
We are starting the discussion on the backgrounder reports on proactive disclosure quickly. It's next week, in fact. That's great. I've had the chance to go through both reports, and there's a lot of information in there. I think if we were really going to be taking a look at a study and the possibility of a trip, it might be worthwhile considering—and you mentioned it—there might be an opportunity to flip if the report card is a little bit later, to have witnesses on proactive disclosure moved up at least a week or two.
When you go through these reports, we have three overarching things to contend with, and there may be more. Just from my own notes, you mentioned the possibility of somebody from Quebec coming. I think it would be worthwhile talking with some authorities—if there is an authority out there—on where other countries in the world are at with proactive disclosure. The timeline for the witnesses, between sitting down and talking with witnesses, and planning for and scheduling a report work and the potential for the trip, might be pressured for May or June.
Just very briefly—because we're going to discuss this next week—the range of where the different countries are goes from directives to recommendations to commitments to in fact positive duties at law, which is a fairly broad spectrum of where each country is at. If you look at where they are—we have it from 2002 to 2009 as far as I can tell—some countries have broken it down into specific departments, and that may be useful for us. The Canada report probably suggests that we need to think about which country or which ones we're most closely aligned with, both in terms of stage and how we might be thinking about planning our study for the purposes of comparison.
Without talking too much more about the substance of proactive disclosure, I raise the fact that there are a lot of different things to think about in terms of witnesses for here and what the study will contain. I think that will guide us. And certainly any trip that we might consider will in fact be guided by that as well. That's my comment on the calendar with respect to the work on proactive disclosure that we're considering. I might add, finally, that it's an exciting study, in my view, just having gone through the reports at some length.
I just think we need to be aware of what our timelines would be around that.
Thank you.