Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I've listened to all of my colleagues around the table here, particularly Ms. Dzerowicz and Mr. Baker, about why we need to move forward with what might be a slightly elongated schedule.
I'll go back to what I've repeated here. I don't think anybody has actually drawn out a schedule of what we have to go through. Nobody's actually blocked off “Here's where we do this. Here's what we go through.” In my opinion, from everything I've heard today, it should be, “Here's when we need to have this done, so forget about everything that's going to transpire in the meantime. Let's just get this done by this date. We'll fudge that as we go through the process here.”
This is not a process you just arrive at in the end. You have to go through listening to the witnesses and considering their input, and then do the clause-by-clause study once you have considered what they've said. Right now we don't even have a list of the witnesses we're going to consider, let alone any idea of what the minister is going to say. The minister has known about this, I should point out, for quite some time. The minister could have scheduled to move this very quickly a long time ago and didn't do so. This committee should have been set up quite some time ago as well.
Jamming us in because we have a sudden and self-imposed deadline when we haven't blocked off who's going to be doing what and when, I think, is a charade. With all due respect, for everything we hear in this committee, this is democracy. We're here to listen to what people say and consider what is going to happen with this bill and how this bill can be better when it comes out the other end, when we refer it to the Senate, which is also going to go through its own process with it at that point in time.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.