I'm going to reiterate. I have yet to hear a single reason why we can't hear from CIDA now from any member of the opposition, unless there is something coming forward that involves debating Madame Lalonde's motion in full, which I don't think we should do before we hear witnesses. I don't believe anybody thinks we should do that before we have all the evidence. I hope they don't believe we should be taking positions before we have all the evidence. That would be one reason you might want to go ahead.
Another reason you might want to go ahead is that you don't want to hear from CIDA, but there is absolutely no reason that we can't have committee business--procedural discussion--after we've heard from CIDA and after we've heard from the Red Cross as well, as Madame Folco has suggested. There is no reason at all that we can't proceed in that fashion.
Absent that, there seems to be no need for the motion that is on the floor, a motion that has now cost an hour of time that these individuals and officials would have spent working on the humanitarian issues in Lebanon. An hour of time has been lost already. How much more time will be spent when we actually do debate committee business? This has been a debate not on the actual substance of committee business, but on whether to even do it. Does anybody here realistically think that if we're going to have a lengthy discussion like this on the substance of committee business, we're ever going to hear from them today? No, we'll lose a whole day of their time, and that would be most unfortunate.
In the absence of a single argument, a single proposition put forward by any of the members of the opposition as to why we can't hear from CIDA before we deal with committee business, I see no reason why we shouldn't hear from CIDA.