Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Colleagues, if we are going to go to a vote, I think that's fine. Eventually, we will get there.
If the minister continues to wish to appear at committee only when there is legislation to move, we will have or continue to have challenges at the committee. I did not hear any of my colleagues from the government side indicate that there's a willingness for the minister to come, that she's interested in appearing to close out the inflation study, that she's interested in appearing to make up for the two appearances that she did not attend with respect to the previous motion that was passed. Unless we get some assurances that the minister is taking the committee and its work seriously....
If the minister would love to come and tell us the studies she's interested to see the committee conduct to make her job easier, we have opportunities to put more studies forward. I think there's a very good study to be considered with respect to housing and mortgages. We're in the mortgage study right now on how we will meet our housing requirements. If the minister wants to give us some direction or steer us toward what she's interested in before the next budget, that would also be helpful. However, in the absence of any government member indicating that the minister takes the committee seriously or is interested in attending, whether it's for three hours or 90 minutes or even an hour, it's going to be very hard for us to get any work done.
Frankly, it was the will of this committee to ask her to appear for 90 minutes with the Governor of the Bank of Canada. That request was never even responded to. If that's going to be the continuation of the committee, we'll live with the results of a vote today. If that's going to be the continuation of the thought process of the minister and the Prime Minister's Office, we will have a challenging fall and we will have a challenging spring and we could be back to the lectures from Mr. Perkins, which were all very interesting, but we weren't very productive as a committee last year. This is an attempt to put something on the table. If the minister is interested in taking it or if the government is interested in taking it or making some amendments, that's fantastic.
This government—and the minister, frankly—were cheering that we are now down below 3% inflation. You know what? Some will look at that and say it's great news; other people will look at it and say, “Guess what? My groceries are still up by 9%.” There is a discussion to be had there. The minister just recently said in a news conference that “we are very close to the end of this difficult time”, except three weeks later OSFI said that insolvencies were up for consumers and businesses. Therefore, I would like to know which data the finance minister is looking at.
The minister and the government think everything is fine, as they've been saying all along. Canadians have a right to know what the minister and the government are thinking about in advance of the next budget. If we can't get the minister to appear and have a discussion with us, then it's going to be a little difficult to get anything done in the fall.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.