Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I suppose I find myself in a position of pleasing nobody on the committee, perhaps, but I would say this: It still strikes me that even with the amendment, this is a motion that's designed to fail.
One of the ongoing frustrations at this committee, and rightly so, has been that the minister has been invited to appear on very many things and hasn't appeared on anything but her own legislation. That's the crux of the matter. There have been a lot of issues that go beyond the scope of the minister's legislation that this committee has wanted to examine and has wanted to interview the minister about, both to glean more insight into the government's approach to these matters and to appropriately challenge the government on its response to a number of things. That is the job, after all, of the parliamentary committee, but I think when we have a long-standing issue, running at least a year and a half now, of the minister not responding to invitations, I just don't think it's very realistic to expect her to suddenly change her long-standing position of snubbing committee invitations, whether it's a seven-day or a 14-day turnaround.
I think coming back into session is a more likely timetable. I don't know what time the minister has spoken for or not, but presumably she plans to be in Ottawa around the time of the opening of the session. I think that would speak to the committee in preparing its work for the fall in a way that the amendment doesn't do.
I share the exasperation of other opposition members over the minister's unwillingness to come and talk about inflation and interest rates except in the context of her own legislation, but I have to ask....
The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and over again, and this play of trying to issue new invitations just frankly hasn't been effective. What could be effective is for the committee to spend even half the time that we've spent over the last two years talking about ministerial invitations in talking about the issues that we all say we want to talk to the minister about and talking to other people in Canadian society who are experts, whether they're economists or advocates in the housing space or in the grocery space or whatever. As Mr. Redekopp mentioned, the folks who are running food banks around the country are becoming experts on the economy and really have their fingers on the pulse of what's going on and what's wrong with the current state of affairs. Those are people who are also worth hearing from.
The minister can come any time she wants. I think that's pretty clear. The issue isn't whether the committee has issued enough invitations: The issue is whether the minister is going to come. I think our time could be better used. If we want to issue another invitation for when we come back in the fall, fine, but I don't think that's going to break the logjam here. Instead of waiting on the minister and spending all of our meetings talking about when the minister is going to come, when I think a lot of us already know the answer to that after a year and a half of waiting, we should be talking to other folks who have that expertise so that we can be issuing reports back to the House that talk about what the government should be doing and what its shortcomings are. I'm sure there are many of us who would like to point out some of those shortcomings; I'm sure there are others on the committee who'd like to point out areas where they feel the government has done a bang-up job.
That's the meat of the work of a committee, and after spending two years on this committee, I'm concerned that we haven't been doing enough of that work. We've been waiting for a minister who isn't coming, except when it's about her legislation, and I think it's time that we started.... What I'm hearing from opposition members is that they want to put pressure on the government to act otherwise. I think it's time for us as a committee to come up with some real recommendations for what government ought to be doing that it's not doing or things that it is doing that it shouldn't be doing. That's another legitimate way of building political pressure and holding a government to account.
Spending more time talking about the length of time a minister is going to appear or setting deadlines we know are not going to be met, like the 14-day turnaround on an invitation when there have been invitations open for 18 months that she hasn't taken us up on—or, as Mr. Chambers pointed out, in some cases hasn't even responded to, either in the affirmative or in the negative—is just not the best use of our time.