My point in raising that, Chair, in relation to my motion, is to again point out that not all of the knowledge of Canada resides here at PROC, notwithstanding the government's belief that they have nothing to hear from anybody outside the safe and secure bubble of Ottawa. We beg to differ, we have begged to differ for many hours, and we continue to differ. We will continue to give examples of groups that we want to bring in, and to explain why their points of view matter, and why it's important for us to not just hear from these representatives here in Ottawa, but in some cases to give them or the folks they represent an opportunity to make their case where they live. That's our motion. There are three components to the motion.
The first one is witnesses—who—and I've been providing why. The second is about travel, and we talked a fair bit about that—not done yet. The last one, I don't talk about as much, but it is relevant and it's there for an important reason: the May 1 start. It's a goal. It wasn't an end date, and it's still achievable. It's still very achievable, especially, Chair, given the fact that this committee is a master of its own destiny, and that this committee can meet whatever hours and days it chooses. We still have plenty of time to do the right thing. We have the means to do the right thing. What we do not have is the political will on the part of the government, the Conservatives, to do the right thing. So we continue to insist, as best we can, that this government needs to let go of its ironclad grip on this process and recognize that others are entitled to have their say, and not just here in the safety and security of Ottawa.
Chair, we mentioned some places in our motion. For instance, we took a generic descriptor like Atlantic Canada, rather than being provincially specific to that. That was on purpose. As you know, oftentimes an opposition party in particular will mention as many places as they can because it's good politics. It rings well and people like seeing their place mentioned there. But we deliberately made it very general in terms of the areas and regions of Canada we wanted to go to.
I just wanted to mention that some of the places that the other committees have been to would be ideal for us to visit—absolutely ideal. Earlier I talked about Iqaluit and about how that would be a good place for us, how easy it is to get there, that there are fine accommodations there, and that there's lots of security, so the government doesn't need to be worried about being attacked by Canadians. I don't know who they're afraid of. There's probably a bigger chance of getting attacked by bears than any of the Canadians up there. But whatever, there's lots of security. Everyone would be nice and safe. They don't need to worry about a thing. Somebody will hold their hand all the way from the hotel to the committee room. We'll make sure nobody gets hurt by those Canadians who might have a sign that says, “Stop Harper”.
Now I mention that lead-in, Chair, because I'd like to give an example of the first place that we mentioned, Atlantic Canada. I've already made reference to the north and I did talk about the difference between northern Ontario and northern Canada, which are very different.
But in this case what I'd like to do is to point to the Atlantic provinces. What I have in front of me, Chair, is certainly a reference to Charlottetown. In 2011 Charlottetown had a population of 34,562. They have 44 square kilometres with 35,000 people. Why would we go there, would be the question one might ask. We would answer that first of all, it's Canada. It's Atlantic Canada, it's a well-known city. I don't have the flight times for that one, as I did for Iqaluit, but I know it's pretty easy to get there. I'm 100% certain that there's lots of security so the government doesn't need to worry about being frightened by their own citizens.