One of our colleagues raised the point about efficiency of taxpayers' dollars and the valuable use of the time of members of Parliament. Perhaps he didn't quite understand the context of the specific statement I was making.
If the amendment as currently proposed passes, Mr. Chair, you will not able to call any witnesses on any other topics, even if we have free time as a committee. One hundred percent of our time has to be spent exclusively on the west coast aquaculture industry, if I'm reading the motion correctly. That is not a bad thing, especially if 100% of our time can be used for west coast aquaculture issues.
Past experience has taught each and every one of us that there are moments and occasions when scheduling conflicts with key witnesses do occur, and that we do indeed have open time, time made available through nobody's fault; it's just that witnesses were not available.
We have ended up cancelling meetings in the past--our regular scheduled Monday or Wednesday afternoon meetings--because we don't have witnesses to hear from. If we pass this motion, it precludes the chair from using that free time to call witnesses on another issue. That's not a very productive use of taxpayers' dollars or MPs' precious time.
When you vote for this--if you're true to those principles--bear in mind that locking us into the study of one issue, and one issue only, may seem very positive in spirit towards the needs of those of our stakeholders in the west coast aquaculture industry, but it's not being very true to the needs of taxpayers, who expect that if we do indeed have free time, we use that time as beneficially, efficiently, and effectively as possible.
I don't think those taxpayers that we're protecting would want to hear we're taking a Wednesday afternoon off because we don't have anybody to hear from because of a scheduling conflict, when we could be doing other business.