Mr. Chair, before the break, I was in the midst of reading the letter that I'm sending to Minister Gould today with regard to essentially the scheduling conflict we have between the items on the agenda for this committee that are coming from that minister's office, because we are the committee that takes care of the democratic institutions portfolio, and the Standing Orders review that we've been given.
I went through a series of four questions, one of which has four subsidiary items. The four subsidiary items are the items that are coming from her to us: the CEO recommendations report from the 42nd election; Bill C-33, currently at second reading; her proposed bill on political financing; and then, of course, our Standing Orders and how they work together.
Now we'll come back to my actual text of the letter I will write to her, continuing on from where I left off:
As you know, [the procedure and House affairs committee] can always be seized with questions relating to matters of privilege at any time, which can serve to disrupt pre-planned study schedules. Two such matters have been debated in the House of Commons just this past week.
I would be grateful [to you] if you could convey a response to my questions herein to the Clerk of [the procedure and House affairs committee] for the information of [all] committee members. You are, of course, under no obligation to make reference to this letter.
Then I go on and say some other stuff. I may as well finish it off here:
On the matter of your offer to meet in-person, I would like to take you up on your offer in the short-term, however the unpredictable but largely-continuous...meeting schedule [of the procedure and House affairs committee] does not presently allow me to commit in advance to being available to meet you at a particular time. That said, my staff are happy to work with yours to find a time that would work with both our schedules on short notice.
I think I'm going to add a little note in there to her as well to say that I'm also available to meet during off weeks because, unlike many members of this committee—most notably yourself, Mr. Chair—I don't have a riding that is far, far away. Perth feels like it's a million miles from Ottawa, but it's actually a one-hour drive from wherever you're sitting right now, if there's no traffic. I could come in and meet with the minister if she's in Ottawa. As a minister, she might be here during the break week.
Anyway, that was what I said to her.
As I was going through this, a thought occurred to me regarding the—