Thank you.
Yes, it's hard to debate this specific motion after hearing such impactful testimony, but what I want to do is broaden the discussion. We've been studying COVID since last February. We've heard a lot of evidence on a lot of subjects between February and now. Of course, with the prorogation, that ended that evidence. If my memory is correct, we adopted all that evidence when we struck the new committee, and we carried on with our study.
My concern is that, as impactful as the evidence we've heard over the last few weeks on mental health has been, we've heard a lot of impactful evidence on a lot of issues. I'm concerned that selecting one issue out of all of the different subjects and important areas that we've heard about, and then occupying the committee's attention on that one particular issue, doesn't do justice to many of the other issues we have. It kind of prioritizes one particular issue out of these things. I think a very strong case has just been made by Michelle and John that if an interim report were to be issued on anything right now, it probably should be on vaccines or the next thing. I don't think it does violence to anybody's position that all of these issues are important. It's just that the real question before us is that, in the middle of this study, do we really want to stop and isolate one aspect of it and then devote very precious and scarce committee time to that particular issue?
I think I can say at the same time that I think mental health is extremely important, but I don't know that it stands alone, among all of the issues we're facing in COVID, as being the issue that we should stop and focus on.
With respect to Michelle's case, I always admire her work ethic. I'm starting to understand why she was voted the hardest-working parliamentarian. I'm not as hard-working, I don't think. Actually, the truth is that we're really stretched. I mean, we have two committee meetings a week. I know that some of us are on more than one committee. I'm also on the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, which meets four hours a week. We also have our caucus meetings and our question periods. We have our constituency work as well. Of course, maybe it's my unique situation, along with Luc, but we're just one on this committee. There are no substitutions allowed. There's just one of us. So I don't think the answer is to develop more meetings. That would be very difficult to schedule.
It's up to Mr. Van Bynen, but I'm wondering if you might consider withdrawing the motion or tabling it. We could reconsider this maybe after we've heard at least the first priority of each of the parties on this study. We've just completed the first theme. The Liberals chose mental health. Conservatives are choosing vaccines. The NDP's and the Bloc's issues are yet to come. I thought maybe at the end of that first priority, since we have four each, we could revisit this idea there. Maybe at that time we could review the major themes we've had and at that point consider doing an interim report, which I think is not a bad idea. Perhaps we can pick four or five or six or seven issues that we might want to select out of the many issues we've focused on over what's coming up to a year. We could issue an interim report, not just on one particular issue but on several. Perhaps that would be a logical break time for us to consider the wisdom of doing an interim report.