Absolutely, Chair.
That's why, as I began down this road, I started.... The article goes on and on. I didn't realize it was quite so long.
The point is, of course, that this is information. I think there are two really important things. First, this happened today. The second thing is that this article points out and underlines that, if there is any avenue in this country to get this incredibly important issue into the mind of the Minister of Health, Mark Holland, we are the closest people physically and from a “loudness of voice” perspective to get that information to him.
That being said, this is an urgent issue that we already had on the docket previously, which does relate specifically to the drafting instructions that we were to get to today.
I just can't understand it. We got into this problem before in this committee, where we, first of all, had a health human resources study that got backed up for, I want to say, over a year. That's a disservice to Canadians.
Then we had a children's health study for which we had so many different members here that, in the end, I think there were probably three, four or five of us here for the majority of the testimony related to that. Trying to create a report that is in any way, shape or form useful on behalf of Canadians when the majority of people were not even here during the report to hear the testimony becomes very difficult.
I think, too, when we talked about this previously, we had talked about trying to clear some of the backlog of issues that we had. Using the half an hour that we had today would have made perfect sense to do that, and then, as I said, to have some planning meetings around looking at the other topics that are of critical importance to Canadians.
I'm not saying, Ms. Sidhu, that your motion is not of critical importance—perhaps it is. I think perhaps hearing it again would be useful. Our minds were significantly turned to another issue that's of critical importance to Canadians right now and unbelievably topical since the federal government was involved in a partnership with the B.C. government for an experimental decriminalization project with respect to opioids, which are killing more than 22 people a day on average. You all know that.
We were focused on that particular study, and that study wanted to be interrupted.... I can't understand why when we had significant witnesses here—