Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to move a motion that hopefully will allow us to plan our meetings until the holiday break. I served notice of that motion last week. I will read it into the record. I move that:
Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, October 26, 2020, the committee commence its study of the emergency situation facing Canadians in light of the second wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the following manner: (a) each party shall submit four topics ranked in order of priority by the close of business Wednesday, November 18, 2020; (b) each topic will be examined in turn and by priority, on the following rotation: Liberal, Conservative, Bloc, NDP; (c) the committee will determine by majority vote the number of meetings allocated to each topic, holding a minimum of one meeting and a maximum of four meetings, unless determined by unanimous consent to hold additional meetings; (d) each party shall be entitled to an equal number of witnesses in accordance with the mandatory instruction from the House outlined in the order of reference of Monday, October 26, 2020; (e) all witnesses for the first round of prioritized topics shall be submitted within one week of the number of meetings for each topic being agreed to; and (f) once all four topics submitted by the four parties have been completed, the committee will determine if there are additional topics to be scheduled and, if so, will follow the process outlined in this motion once again.
Mr. Chair, to speak briefly to the motion, it would allow us to get started on the COVID study immediately, and it provides a process to do so by this Wednesday. The parties will submit their four topics ranked in order, and then we'll proceed with the Liberals' first choice. We'll have to decide how many meetings we allocate to that once we know what their first choice is. Then we'll go to the Conservatives' first choice, and then the Bloc's first choice, and then the NDP's first choice, and then we come back to the second and proceed, and so on and so forth.
I think this motion is fair. It allows each party to have an equal number of topics. As a matter of fact, once we submit our topics, we could even find that there's overlap. Perhaps we can even have discussions among ourselves to avoid that. I just want to make sure we have a full, broad examination of this topic.
I think we have to get started on the COVID study as a matter of priority. This is a very unusual situation in that the House of Commons has directed this committee to study this issue. I think when we marry that direction with the obvious red-hot pandemic gripping our country right now, we should get started on this right away.
I'm going to suggest a little bit more—