Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
There are a few members around the table who are not regular committee members. I'm not sure where the rest have been, but we have been pretty busy in the last couple of months, if I'm not mistaken. So if anybody thinks we've had time to look at the trust issue...I don't know where the rest of you have been.
I think this motion is the only way we can prioritize what the committee work should be in the upcoming months. You just said yourself, Mr. Chairman, that we have a full schedule coming. This is an important issue. We have put it ahead. I have no problem even saying that it be held before February 2 so that we get this issue ahead of time, get ahead of the curve for once; as parliamentarians, we can get ahead of the curve. We can actually dictate to the minister, to the finance officials, what Canadians are saying, and that's the purpose of this motion.
If anybody sees something other than that, I think they're mistaken. As I said, we've had a heavy schedule. The finance officials yesterday posted the proposed legislation, the proposed guidelines, but we have no way of knowing who has submitted what or what people are actually saying to the finance officials. This is a way, if you like, to monitor that or to get our opinion across.
If anything, I am going to propose an amendment—I'm not sure if I can, Mr. Chairman—that at the end of the first sentence.... I will read it first:
That the finance committee invite expert witnesses to appear, including officials from the Department of Finance, to testify in regard to the decision to tax income trusts, with a view to preparing a report for the Minister of Finance regarding its findings.
At least we're going to prepare a report on which the finance minister has to reply to the committee. For once this committee can get ahead of the curve. The only way we can do that is by holding a meeting like this, so that we can have the meetings as soon as we get back in the last week of January. If we don't, what's going to happen, as everybody around this table knows, is we will come back here at the end of January and wait another week; then we're going to discuss in a steering committee meeting what we're going to be doing, and we will lose two weeks of work.
If anybody around this table is trying to tell Canadians that we're wasting our time, in actual fact, we're wasting our time debating about debating.... In actual fact, we should be debating how many hours, who we're going to have testifying before the committee, and when this report should be done, because that is what I think our job is, to prepare a report.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.