Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will try to be brief.
While I consider Mr. Genius's concerns to be entirely legitimate, it would be inappropriate to assume bad faith on anyone's part in this matter from the outset.
Let me explain. The last meeting was indeed cancelled because, given the very short notice, unfortunately only three witnesses had been confirmed. Since we wanted to have three hours of debate with nine witnesses, more notice should have been given. Despite the advance notice, clearly it wasn't possible for us to welcome more than four witnesses today. It seemed to me that it would be altogether inappropriate to spend three hours asking questions to four witnesses when we had planned to spend three hours on nine witnesses. The chair respected the wishes of committee members to hear from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress again, spending one hour on that alone, then to hear from a second group of three witnesses.
Now, that leaves us with the matter of the third hour. Would it have been appropriate to use the hour to discuss the committee's future business, as the committee members have said? That's a legitimate question. However, perhaps it would also be worthwhile to let the dust settle once we've heard from the witnesses, so that we can make more timely interventions as to how we will proceed.
Therefore, if we must have a meeting about the committee's future business, I'd like to see it happen as soon as possible. I'm not sure we have enough time to do it in the third hour today, since we will still need to digest the information the witnesses have provided. However, while Mr. Genuis's questions are entirely legitimate, I feel that, under the circumstances, the clerk and the chair acted in the best possible manner and with the best intentions. I therefore support the chair's decision to cut today's proceedings short in order to consolidate our panels and make the discussion even more illuminating. By the way, this was not a unilateral decision. Other members, including myself, were consulted.
That's what I wanted to add, Mr. Chair.