Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I, too, think that this is an important study to undertake. I support all the amendments that have been proposed and the deadline Mr. Beech has proposed in terms of the witnesses.
There are only two additional comments I would make. First, I'm glad we have a section in here that has “and any witnesses invited by committee members”. I did a very quick search on housing prices and inflation around the world. In the search that I did in literally a few minutes, I saw the massive increases in housing prices in Nordic countries, the U.S., the U.K., Germany and Italy. It was quite interesting to see what's happening around the world.
One witness that I'll be suggesting is someone from.... The Pew Research Center has actually done a big report on 46 countries in terms of inflation. It will be good to put some of the things that are happening in Canada into context with what's happening in the world, so that we can identify what is Canada-specific and what, more specifically, we could actually address here in Canada.
The other comment I would make is on the original motion Mr. Poilievre has put forward and the second-last bullet point, “That...the chair enforce the rule that a witness's response to a question take no longer than the time taken to ask the question”. I agree with this statement broadly. I will say, though, that there are times when it is difficult to say, “Answer this question, yes or no.” If we're really looking for a response, we won't get much of one in two or three seconds. I don't know how to address that. I would just say that witnesses need a fair opportunity to be able to genuinely answer the question.
At this point, I'll just note that I have a bit of a concern about a very definitive rule of two seconds and two seconds. Let's just remind ourselves that we want answers, and we want to respect witnesses and their ability to have the time to provide those answers to us.
Those are my comments for now, Mr. Chair.