I imagine that Mr. Lareau has already left us, but I wanted to say that his comments were very interesting. I did a lot of work in this field in another life, and he raised some very important points.
With regard to the motion we're debating, there appears to be a problem. Its purpose is to summon two witnesses, which is nothing new. However, my understanding is that the clerk has had trouble contacting people and the dates are a problem.
Having said that, I want to discuss the fact that we're proposing to retain the services of a skip tracer.
A skip tracer brings me back to my banking collection days, Chair. I wasn't even really sure that it was still a thing, because there are so many ways to find people online now and so on.
It seems bizarre, to say the least, that a parliamentary committee—which has the power, if it so desires, to invite people, reach out to people and, if need be, summon people—would be hiring the services of a private third party. I'm not sure we have the budget for that, Chair. I would like to see just what would be involved. At the very least, I would think that daily rates for these kinds of professionals would be around $500 a day.
It seems very bizarre to me that we would even be talking about this, but maybe it's a new thing that can go on social media. We'll have a skip tracer and we'll be doing a reality show or something like that. Maybe that's what we're going for. I don't know.
It's all quite bizarre. I think we can adopt a motion to that effect, if necessary, but we should normally start by inviting people to appear.
I don't think it's absolutely necessary to set dates. I'm really quite uncomfortable with the idea of hiring a third party to find these people when we have no budget for it. I can't agree on this motion as drafted and think other changes should be made.
I'd like someone on the team to explain the reasoning for this motion to me.
Mr. Chair, if the committees start hiring people to do these things, where does it all lead? We have highly qualified employees, and the committee has powers and privileges that it can normally use.
I'd like some changes to be made to this motion. I'm thinking about that.
I'd like you to put my name on the speakers list once again, Mr. Chair.