Mr. Chair, it is commonplace within this committee, as well as other committees that I've sat on, that the length of a question is applied to the length of the answer. Where the frustration comes, with this minister, is that he tends to go on beyond the length of the time that it took to ask the question.
As you know, members are given a specific allotment of time. It is frustrating when you have ministers appear, not just this minister, but other ministers.... I know that this minister is well versed in the art of what we call ragging the puck, and so are other ministers, taking up the time of each member. When my colleague and others ask simple questions about a number, that's all they look to receive. If we wanted the statistics for each province, I would offer that it would then bode the answer that the minister was going for.
I can see that my colleague has done research and has a number of questions that he would like to ask, so I would ask, through you to the minister, that if and when he can be concise, to please be concise.