Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
I always enjoy the opportunity to speak to the experts. As my colleague mentioned, certain people were invited. I think we also have to recognize, notwithstanding that this winter is a little bit different from others, that it's vacation time. When we are very rigid on a date as in, you need to appear or we want you to appear on X date, and someone isn't in the country, I would submit that it would be reasonable for you as chair and the clerk to use some discretion to say that, if this is a witness we'd like to hear from, maybe we would move the date.
We programmed out the motion to be very specific that today was the day when we were having this hearing. That was set before we had any discussion with any witnesses. I can't speak to the particular details of the current situation, but if we want to have very specific requests on individuals, we may need to be a bit more flexible. I would give more flexibility to you as chair and to the clerk, to say, “This individual we really want is not available on the 27th, but they are available on this date, so can we change the motion or just have unanimous consent to move this meeting to the next meeting?”
I worry now that I don't know what the plan is for future studies on this.
Anyway let's get to the witnesses here today. I think because we were fairly rigid on the date, that prevented us from potentially hearing from witnesses we wanted to hear from. You have, at least from me, the ability to make recommendations on changing dates in the future, depending on the availability of witnesses.