—should really be looking at edibles as a subject. I think we should look at whether or not it should be covered.
Finally, medicinal marijuana is not indicated in this list, which, I think, is a subject.
I have to say there are a couple of things in here that I'm not sure warrant complete separation as subjects. For instance, workplace safety I'm not sure is a subject on its own. I think that will be touched on by adding these other subjects. I'm a little confused as to why indigenous communities would be segregated out on cannabis. I'm not sure that there's any particular aspect of this bill that has a unique application to indigenous communities.
I have a final couple of housekeeping matters.
I would rather not have one witness allocated per subject. Rather, let's just divide up the witnesses by our percentage and let each party determine where they would like to call their preponderance of witnesses. There might be a subject here for which I'm perfectly comfortable with the government's witnesses and on which I don't feel I have a witness who could add anything, but there may be another subject for which I would like to have two instead of one. I would propose that friendly amendment.
John, you mentioned something about there being at least 72 witnesses. This motion talks about the chairman scheduling a maximum of 72 witnesses. I understand that you're referring to just these four days, but I want to be clear that we're talking about 72 witnesses for these four days.
Finally, within those 72 witnesses, the last item proposes that the three ministers appear before this committee. If they have 10 minutes each, that's going to take up a significant part. I would even propose that, perhaps, we sit on the Friday, as well, and have the fifth day. Maybe that could be limited just to the ministers, as an example.
One of the difficulties I had when I thought this would be only the four straight days was that it would not give us any time, really, to digest the evidence, or if you hear something, to research and inquire among other people to get different perspectives. That's another reason I'm really going to be pressing the committee hard to have a day or several days of testimony after this, so that after these four intense days or five intense days, we have a chance to reflect on what we have heard and maybe even hone some further testimony. We've seen that in the pharmacare study, Mr. Chair. As there is testimony, it's an organic process, and we decide to call yet other witnesses to go down paths that maybe we didn't anticipate at the beginning.
Finally, on paragraph 1(i), I'm not sure federal-provincial responsibilities warrant a topic on their own. We're a federal committee, and we are going to be looking at the federal issues on this, I think.
I guess what I'm saying is, with regard to those paragraphs (i) to (viii), although I think it's a very good first proposal, I'm already seeing that some of them should be dropped and others should be added. Either we can do that now or maybe we can leave this a little bit flexible in some way. I don't know how the committee wants to have it or how my colleagues feel about that. Otherwise, I would propose that we drop paragraphs (i), (vii), and (viii), and replace them with packaging, edibles, and medicinal marijuana. I don't want to limit any particular category. If members feel there should be other areas, then I think we should add them.
Those are my preliminary comments at this point.