Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I always find it refreshing when someone comes to this place and wants to show deference to Parliament as an institution. Though part of me wanted to scream, “Debate, debate”, it's important for us all to be mindful of our responsibilities to make sure that this institution is left as good as possible, if not better off. I do appreciate the member's approach when it comes to this.
Mr. Chair, getting back to the subamendment, again I have to raise concerns about proper process and bad faith. While at first glance the parliamentary secretary has brought forward what appears to be a good faith effort to work with the Bloc Québécois member, MP Ste-Marie, the challenge we have here, Mr. Chair, is this: The timeline that has been given is overwhelmingly short.
Each one of these committees—and I'm a former member of INDU, for example—has its hands full with a great amount of its own business. Making the time so short means that what will legitimately happen is that a committee will say it has received a letter from the the chair here, and in it he's saying they have to respond within a very short period of time. Members on the individual committee, be it justice or industry, are going to say, “Well, we have already worked out this plan”, so one of two things will happen. Either they're going to have to abandon other important work or they will try to load up with extra resources that we know just do not exist.
Why would I say that, Mr. Chair? It's because we know that we need proper access to translators. In this area I support my colleagues from Quebec 100%. Francophones should be able to have that simultaneous translation in their first language.
As you know better than anyone, Mr. Chair, from working with the clerk, it can be very difficult. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the clerk has had calls from resources saying that they cannot accommodate us any further. The finance committee, from my experience, has always been given a bit more deference than other ones, because it is considered one of the workhorses of this Parliament.
We might be now loading up extra resources or having these committees say that there's no way they can properly call witnesses by May 20. That's 11 days, colleagues. Let's just say that even if the clerk, on the instruction of the chair after a successful conclusion of today's committee, were to send out a letter today, and those things were put to the next meeting, you would have to call witnesses. You would have to actually have a business meeting.
Pardon me, Mr. Chair; I'm not even doing things sequentially, and you deserve better than that.
Number one, you would need to call a business meeting, and then you would have to have a call for witnesses, and all those witnesses would have to be at hearings that would happen before May 20.
There's a good question for MP Beech, or perhaps MP Ste-Marie. We've found out, through this process, that clause-by-clause consideration will not be done by these individual committees; it will be us. Again, are they supposed to write a report? Are we supposed to kind of tune in and listen to the concerns of those MPs?
The Conservatives have already planned for this. We've already said that the finance committee has decided to do a prestudy, so we'll be bringing our critics here and we've put forward a number of witnesses. I'm glad to hear that there will be flexibility granted by the chair, as confirmed by the clerk, to be able to ask questions even if a section has been designated out, but again there are going to be many coordination issues to be dealt with.
Mr. Chair, that is a summation on the subamendment, which I believe is what we're debating here. This would be Mr. Beech's amendment to the amendment. Is that correct?