Mr. Blaikie, we'll open a chess.com window once somebody else is....
It will no doubt be a great source of disappointment to members when I say that I have to duck out at six o'clock. I will quickly conclude my remarks. I think others may have some points to make, but if the discussion is still going on after seven o'clock, to quote the great General MacArthur, I will be back and I may have more to say at that point.
To conclude, on the issue of the Minister of Public Safety and the importance of his role, as well as the important moment we're going through right now in terms of concern about this issue, I think in the budget implementation act it would have been wiser to allocate funds for a full inquiry into what's going on. That would have been the more appropriate approach. We need to actually look at what has happened, get to the bottom of it and hold people accountable.
I might say that the national inquiry should not be led by someone who works or has worked at the Trudeau Foundation. There are still some Canadians out there who have not worked for the Trudeau Foundation. I'm sure one of them would be available to lead such an inquiry.
Again, this speaks to the importance of having the Minister of Public Safety speak on the budget implementation act and answer some questions about what he's been up to and what the spending plan is around strengthening our police response to these issues. We'll probably have some other questions for the Minister of Public Safety about the challenges this country faces in terms of crime and how the budget seeks to respond to those. The government is devoting enormous resources to targeting law-abiding firearms owners while failing to directly deal with the issue of repeat violent offenders, which can be directly traced to changes the government made to the parole system.
The subamendment that I put forward does deal with the fact that ministers should appear. They shouldn't just be invited to appear; they should be expected to appear. Indeed, the subamendment does say that the clause-by-clause will not proceed unless the ministers appear.
To explain that a bit, there's no way to compel ministers to appear, as has been said and as members know. We can't compel ministers to appear. That's the one exception. You can compel anyone to appear, but you can't compel ministers who, ironically, are the people who should be appearing most often and are most fully accountable for the work being done by their departments. That's the principle of ministerial accountability.
We can't compel ministers to appear, but if we say that the committee expects them to appear before the committee proceeds to clause-by-clause, I think that enshrines the principle that.... I guess you could say it uses the leverage that we have. The committee doesn't have the ability to legally compel ministers to have the Sergeant-at-Arms drag them here. The committee can say that if the government wants to proceed with this legislative agenda, then it has to explain that legislative agenda to committees. It has to make its ministers available for a reasonable period of time—I think two hours is a reasonable period of time to answer questions—and at least respond to questions, if not answer them. If they do so, then the clause-by-clause will proceed.
With great respect for Mr. Blaikie, I think the idea of inviting ministers is fine. Let's invite the ministers, but it would be too easy, if it was simply a matter of an open-ended invitation, for those ministers to blow off the invitation. It will be back to finding Freeland territory again and wondering where the Minister of Finance is and wondering where the Minister of Public Safety is.
In the interest of not being in that territory again and not needing to worry about finding Freeland and so forth, we could proceed with passing the subamendment. Again, to not being in that territory of finding Freeland, I think we should pass the subamendment and therefore be able to move forward.
I will yield the floor at this point and proceed to my other meeting.
As I said, Mr. Chair, I have more things to say. I may have a chance to say them later on this evening.