Listen, I just remarked on the fact that he seems to be smiling, but I'm talking about a serious thing, which is that we did pre-budget consultations the whole summer. Mr. Garon probably knows this. I travelled to Hamilton, Mississauga, Toronto, Vancouver, Whitehorse, Halifax, Cape Breton, P.E.I., Iqaluit, Regina, Saskatoon, Victoria, Windsor and Edmonton. Our team did 50 round tables and had 83,000 survey responses. We went to every province and territory. There were over 940 briefing submissions to this committee on the federal budget. To say that we didn't do any pre-budget consultations is just inaccurate.
I think the main point here is that there's reasonable and then there's unreasonable. We're trying to be very reasonable. We're even willing to vote in support of this motion, even though there's some partisan rhetoric in it that I don't agree with. In essence, there's really only one sticking point here. The committee could just invite the minister to come at his earliest opportunity. We're fairly confident that the minister....
Well, number one, we know that the minister will want to come; it's not a matter of that. It's just that the Minister of Finance has quite a lot of work. He was in Copenhagen recently. Again, as my colleague Mr. Sawatzky mentioned, he is deepening ties with the European Union. We know how important it is right now for our country and our trade relationships to ensure that we can diversify trade in Canada and that we can move to more of a resilient economy rather than being reliant on predominantly one trading partner, which has been the case for quite a number of decades.
I think the key here is that there are reasonable requests and there are unreasonable requests. For a Wednesday appearance from a minister, just to be clear, with today being the 22nd, that would be two days from now. I understand that Mr. Garon would like to see the minister sooner rather than later. We're saying that of course the minister would like to appear and answer any questions the committee has. They are more than willing to do that. It's just that I've been around Parliament for six years, and I know ministers often have busy schedules. I think it's well acknowledged on committee that sometimes they take up to two weeks, maybe more, to come to committee. We try to work with that and to plan our time accordingly.
As my colleagues have mentioned, we have a lot of important work to do in this committee. This is a clarification of a budget cycle moving forward that Mr. Garon would like. I'm not saying it isn't important; I understand it's important to him. I will say that I haven't had one single constituent request on this. My constituents are more concerned with us getting Bill C-4 passed; getting the budget through committee; perhaps studying some of the impacts on our economy before the budget comes down, which I think could be very useful; and perhaps hearing from some of the witnesses, as I suggested in the last meeting.
Again, I started us off trying to be collaborative. I actually mirrored one of the motions that Mr. Hallan had put on notice, made some changes and had some discussion beforehand. I was really trying to start us off on the right foot in terms of doing some work in this committee on pre-budget consultations. If we want to talk about economic security or economic sovereignty, I'm okay with whatever we name it. If we want to call it a pre-study or pre-budget consultations, I'm ambivalent. I don't care. It's whatever the committee members want, but I want some witnesses from Quebec to come before this committee and speak to their perspectives on this federal budget. To me, we're wasting valuable opportunities here by simply being unreasonable on a request.
Wednesday, September 24, is the sticking point. Literally, I've just amended the motion to take that part out and for the committee to invite the minister to come at the earliest opportunity. You certainly have my commitment to ensure that the minister comes to this committee at the earliest opportunity. I will do my very best to make that happen. I know that our minister is very, very competent when he comes to committee. He does a great job. He answers questions. He is forthright. He's even entertaining, because he's such a bubbly personality. I would love to have him here. I always appreciate him when he appears at committee. We'll have him in short order, but it's about being reasonable, my friends. There's reasonable and unreasonable. What you're sticking on is, I believe, an unreasonable request.
In most committees I've been on, whether it was PROC or the agriculture and agri-food committee.... I was on HUMA for a long time. I've been on the finance committee. I was on the industry committee with my colleague Jean-Denis Garon. He eventually changed his mind. He didn't like the tribunal and the legislation, but we worked together for quite some time with good rapport and good relations.
There was always an understanding that when ministers are invited to committee, it may take a week or two, or even longer sometimes, to get them to committee, and that doesn't mean they don't want to come. It doesn't mean they don't value Parliament. I sometimes hear opposition members say, “Well, the ministers don't want to come and do their duty in Parliament.” That's not true. The truth is that ministers are more than willing to come and answer for their files and their portfolios and be held to account by Parliament. It's just that they also have to balance other duties and responsibilities that the Canadian public expects of them. I think those are more than reasonable expectations.
A timeline that's reasonable is really the sticking point here. It would be great if we didn't.... I don't want to assume the motivations for my colleagues, but to stick on such a pointed two-days-from-now timeline is, in the general practice at committees, definitely unreasonable.
I'm sure that many other committees.... We could go back in the records and look at how long it took for a Conservative minister to appear. We could look back in history and see that oftentimes it took two to three weeks to get a minister to appear.
Is this partisan throwing things in the air to try to distract from the important work we have ahead? I don't know, and I don't want to speculate, because I generally hold my colleagues across the table in high regard, and I try to treat them with respect and not assume negative motivations.
It's hard for me to understand why we would be so stuck on this Wednesday, when a couple of weeks from now, the committee could have the minister here. Why wouldn't that be sufficient? What is so important that we can't continue the important work of this committee? Why do we have to hang it up, meeting after meeting, instead of agreeing to something we could achieve consensus on? Have the minister appear, have Mr. Garon get the clarity he desires and move forward with important work that Canadians expect of us.
I don't want to waste our committee time. I feel like I'm being put in a position to have to speak to something I feel adamantly about, which is the part of this that is definitely an unreasonable request.
Thank you.