It seems to me there's a difference between deciding that you want to launch a new policy direction in the fall and deciding in the fall that you want to launch a new policy direction. All of the factors that we've heard about, in terms of there being a pandemic and—well, that's really it. The fact that there was a pandemic was known in June. The fact that we might well be facing a second wave in the fall was known in June. The government could have decided much earlier than August 17 that it was interested in having some kind of prorogation in the fall and in coming back with a speech from the throne, and without proroguing Parliament, it could have undertaken to do the consultative work over a longer period of time than what the Prime Minister left the government to do it.
I'm wondering what changed between any time previous to August 17 and August 17, such that the Prime Minister decided on a much shorter timetable than was necessary that he wanted to relaunch the entire policy direction of government. It seems to me that he had the same information in June that he had in August about whether the pandemic would call for a shift in policy response. He could have provided direction earlier to government to begin those consultations to work towards a new Speech from the Throne in September and obviated any need—and I stress that, because I don't think there was any need in the first place.
Certainly had the government started earlier, as it does with the budget, it could have undertaken broad-based consultations with civil society, had plentiful interdepartmental communication and produced perhaps an even better document than it did, in fact, produce in September, which, I submit, would not have caused a great strain.