Not at all. The point is that this is not the person who is supposed to be here to be accountable. It's supposed to be the minister.
The bottom line is that the idea of taking those two out.... There were obviously efforts made by my colleague in the NDP to try to do that in some kind of co-operative way. It didn't seem as though the government was willing to co-operate in any kind of way to try to allow the opportunity to have more discussion about some of the other parts of this motion. He's made the decision to approach it in the way he has.
I will point out to members of the government that I guess there's nothing stopping them from bringing forward the other nine sections they have in here, if this amendment and the motion itself were to pass. There would be nothing stopping them, at least to my knowledge, from bringing forward the other nine sections and trying again. We can have a full debate at that point on the other nine, if that's what they choose to do.
I think they can expect a fairly full debate on it, because there seem to be some concerns. The point is that I can't imagine why anyone would say there's a problem with hearing from the people who are supposed to be here to answer for what's in there and to be held accountable by members of Parliament on behalf of the public of this country. I can't imagine why anyone would oppose something like this, so hopefully that will be what we see as a result here: that we can move forward with these couple of items and then figure out the rest of it from there.
To look at the idea of.... First of all, I would say that probably nobody here has had the opportunity to really fully look at the BIA, obviously, at this point. The briefing for members of Parliament and their staff is not even scheduled until tonight. Is that correct? The briefing will be held this evening, so to have a motion brought forward to give us a drop-dead date when the debate and the opportunity for consideration are going to be closed and hammered shut, before anyone has even had the opportunity to fully examine the contents and to be briefed on it, is beyond the pale, Mr. Chair. I think there are a lot of reasons why everyone would be concerned as a result of that.
Maybe what I'll do at this point is to move a subamendment. It's much in line with some of the comments that we heard from my friend and colleague Mr. Poilievre, but the subamendment I'll move is on section 7.
What it currently indicates is that “the Committee invite the Minister of Finance to appear on Bill C-97 on Wednesday, May 1, 2019, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., and that officials appear from 5:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., if necessary”. What I would suggest as a subamendment here would be to indicate that “the Committee invite the Minister of Finance to appear, along with officials, on Bill C-97 on Wednesday, May 1, 2019, from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.” That's so both would be available to the entire committee for the whole three hours.
I think the least that can be expected with an omnibus bill of this nature is that the minister would come and appear for the full period of time and not leave officials here to do his dirty work for him for half of the time.