Madam Chair, we certainly could do that. I think there'd be a good possibility of that. My understanding is that PCO has agreed to come on the 10th.
My understanding is that what we're dealing with in these main estimates is the plan that PCO will be bringing forward to move out of a budgetary deficit. I think it's absolutely essential that we, at this committee, get a handle on what the plan is exactly. The contribution that this committee will make will be determined based on the dialogue that we have with PCO, as well as the officials, with regard to the main estimates.
I know we have a lot of things that are pulling us in different directions at this point, but the fact of the matter is that we're talking about a time in history when the estimates really matter. I mean, we are running deficits. We're having plans of restraint coming forward. If we, at this committee, haven't made some effort to understand what's going on, we can't claim two years from now, when we go to public accounts, that we never had an opportunity to bring this forward and dig through this.
I'm comfortable, because I happen to sit in the position where I'm a government member. So I can go to talk to ministers about these things and to different people and get a sense. But this really is the opportunity, and we have an obligation, regardless which party we come from, to dig through this.
I hear from Mr. Nadeau that we don't have any authority, that we have no opportunity to make any difference. Well, actually, we at this committee have one of the greatest responsibilities, in my opinion, as it relates to this Parliament and as it relates to finances in this country. There's no other parliamentary committee that quite has the influence of the ongoing operations of government.
I understand the political desires of people to go in different directions, and I fully understand that. But I just hope we don't sacrifice one of the main responsibilities of this committee in the effort to get in every other witness. The main estimates are the only ones where there's a deadline provided for us, and that's the 31st.
I think if we look at the freeze, or the case studies that we were looking at as they relate to the freeze, we had a number of different witnesses coming. Certainly Corrections was one of them, but we also wanted to look at the Information Commissioner as well, and there were several others.
So there are a number of witnesses that we need to get through before we can complete our study on that, anyway. That's why I'm suggesting let's move that into June, let's get through the work that we as the committee are tasked with and responsible for, and do it appropriately and diligently.
I would hate for this committee to get into a position of simply being a rubber stamping of the estimates. The whole reason that this committee was set up was to engage in a dialogue that would be something more than a rubber stamp.