There's obviously a difference of opinion here. I understand where the members opposite stand. Obviously, the budgetary cycle was interrupted by an election. I see that you're giving me this face, but that's the truth.
What we're proposing to do here is to have our committee hear from witnesses. That's what we propose. Let's hear from the witnesses who have submitted. We had 940 submissions come in to this committee. Obviously, no finance committee in the past has heard from every single person who submitted a brief, but in past years—and I was a part of this committee for the last budget that passed—we heard from witnesses right up until the clause-by-clause analysis.
I think what you're saying is that you want to hear from witnesses and give people a chance to have input in the budget process, but at the same time, you're proposing to not study and not get the consultation process under way. I don't I understand how that makes any sense from a transparency perspective when we know the federal budget is coming on November 4.
I remember opposition parties ranting and raving in the House of Commons, wanting a budget as soon as possible. The government, in due course, spent time to work on consultations across the country and take a lot of input. There were 83,000 submissions to the survey. There were over 50 different consultations across every province and territory and every industry, including those that have been impacted by tariffs.
I get that this committee should hear from many witnesses, and we have 940 of them. I've taken meetings just this week and heard great suggestions from groups for the budget implementation act. Why can't we make use of this committee's time right now by getting into the pre-budget consultation work and hearing from those witnesses? I think their testimony is valuable, and our time is valuable.
I see this as throwing a wrench into the works of this committee to slow us down so that we can't hear from witnesses. The demand is to hear from witnesses, with the claim that somehow, if we hear from them now, it's a waste of time. What then? Are we going to delay hearing from those witnesses because we don't want to hear from them now? We just proposed to hear from witnesses, and it looks like the opposition parties don't want to hear from them.
I remember being in this committee for the last budget that got through Parliament, when the Bloc and Conservative members on the committee made the argument that we needed enough time to hear from enough witnesses before we got into clause-by-clause. I was here for that. I'm not making this up in my head. We had quite a number of meetings and we heard from a number of witnesses. Their testimony was very useful, and I think was really valued by all committee members.
I'm struggling to understand what the path forward might be. It sounds like Mr. Garon is more interested in hearing from just the minister. I thought you wanted to hear from stakeholders. Why wouldn't you want to hear from stakeholders from Quebec and all across Canada as part of this pre-budget process? We have the time. Let's use it wisely here this fall, leading up to the November 4 budget.
The claim that somehow the budget is completely pre-baked is just patently false. It's false. There is certainly work going on internal to the Department of Finance and the minister's office to prepare the budget, but by no means is it completely prepared in advance.
I think we can all agree that there's a considerable amount of work yet to do on the budget. There are still decisions that need to be made, and there's still time to hear from witnesses at this committee and to have their input incorporated into the eventual formulation of the budget that will be released on November 4.
I really feel like this is setting us back. We could be moving forward on that valuable testimony. I really think there are a lot of stakeholders who would love to come. I've been getting lots of requests for people to come to this committee. Maybe we should just sit late and hear from more witnesses and use our time over the next few weeks to hear from as many of them as possible. I would be up for that. That's the hard work that I'm into. I want to make sure that we get this budget right for Canadians.
Thanks.