Mr. Chair, there's been a bit of inspiration, actually, from Mr. Martin on this one in terms of the private member's bill that he moved last week. We all know the difficulties we face with a private member's bill if we're not at the top of the list. It's very difficult to know when it may come up. Even if the bill were to carry, it would come to this committee for further study, which we would be doing over that period of time. That could be next September, Mr. Chair; it could be a lot further on than that.
The time has come for us to take a little bit of time to study this. We spend millions of dollars producing the penny. The question of whether or not it is of value anymore has come up. It may have been 20, 30, 40, or 80 years ago.
Certainly Mr. Martin's private member's bill and the motion I put forward got all kinds of air time. I heard that on the weekend folks were talking about this issue. So I certainly think it's a relevant one. Whether there are cost savings involved in not having the penny anymore or whether there is an absolute need to continue producing this product certainly, at the very least, bears a study, albeit probably a brief one. But bringing some experts in to give us some thoughts on that and being able to produce a report at the end and make a recommendation to the Minister of Finance on that issue certainly is within the mandate of the committee.
I'm not suggesting we put all of our current business aside to study it. But when the time does come over the next while when you see fit to work in some of those meetings, Mr. Chair, I hope the finance committee would see fit to take a look at this issue.