—or the witness has been allowed to go over. You've been very fair about that.
What I would say is this. Quite honestly, I think the minister should be asked to come for two hours next time, not one hour. Surely the Minister of Health has two hours every six months for the Standing Committee on Health. I would rather see that happen so that members would actually have a chance to put their questions more fulsomely to the minister.
Some of my questions to the very able staff quite rightfully were deferred, as in, “You should have asked that to the minister.” I would like to have the chance to put those questions to the minister. The next time we ask the minister to come here, rather than try to truncate seven minutes or three minutes, I would rather ask the minister to come for two hours.
Finally, what I would say is that I also think the practice of the minister asking her officials to answer questions when she's here is inappropriate, because the staff usually stays after. Usually they stay for the second hour. That's when we have a chance to direct our questions to the departmental staff, but we only have limited time to put our questions to the minister. If the minister doesn't want to answer or wants to defer it to later, that's her prerogative, but to have our time taken up with the minister deferring to the ministerial staff takes the five minutes or seven minutes and makes it even less.
Those would be my suggestions.