I want to be very clear: there is no question of putting this study off indefinitely, of postponing it indefinitely. We all want to get to the bottom of this.
On the other hand, I don't see how it's effective to invite witnesses and look at the documentation if we end up saying that we didn't get the right people to testify or that we need to ask them more questions after discovering other information in the documents provided.
I remind you that our salary and that of the technicians, as well as the committee rooms, are paid for through taxes and taxpayers' money. Taxpayers are already struggling to make ends meet.
I am talking about effectiveness and efficiency.
We have a number of people on this committee, and we can analyze the documents from all angles. Afterwards, we may decide to invite a particular witness to answer our questions. We will ask them specific and sensitive questions, which will help us get to the bottom of this.
If it turns out that these questions need to be put to senior departmental officials or others, that's fine, but it needs to be done in an efficient and cost-effective manner. That's the whole point of it. It's been said that the ArriveCAN application was expensive and didn't work as well as it should have. Finally, we are inviting people to testify, but we don't know exactly what questions to ask them. Once we receive the documents, we say to ourselves that we didn't ask the right questions and that we have to start the process over. At this point, we are the ones who are costing a lot for nothing. What I want is for us to be efficient. We need to get things moving.
If we want to hear from ministers, we will invite them to testify. If we have to invite half the public service, we'll invite all of them to testify.
In my view, we cannot be fully effective if we do not have access to the documents before we put questions to public servants. “Efficiency” and “cost effectiveness” are the key words.
On Thursday, we should not hear from witnesses. As I suggested earlier, we could use that time to properly plan the meetings and to come up with a plan B.
It is not always possible to hear from witnesses on the date we want, but we could have a plan B. Talking to each other is how we'll be able to come up with that plan. We will receive the documents on Monday, October 31. On the following Thursday, we could meet with officials, ministers, or anyone else we find relevant to our study.
In my opinion, that would be more logical, more efficient and more cost-effective.