Madam Chair, I just want to state the obvious, which is that when this subamendment was first presented, I believe it was last Thursday, I had hoped that we might get to a vote on it. We didn't even manage to get to a vote on it on Tuesday. What has become an unreasonable delay in part because of a lack of being able to get to a decision—not delay but délai, en français—has become a tight deadline. It was not a tight deadline when it was first proposed. It fact, it largely mirrored the deadline that Mr. Therrien is now proposing. I'm happy to have a slight extension of the time allowed for the prorogation report provided that we can, nevertheless, start some meetings on Bill C-19 in the time in between. It seems to me that we could.
Mr. Therrien, of course, disagrees, but I think if we wanted to we could get it done. It would be difficult to get it done, but if we could finalize the report by Tuesday, I certainly think that we could do that by the 15th. I think we could do that while allocating some of the intervening meetings. We're talking about the meetings now on the 8th, the 10th and the 15th. I think only two of those or one and a half of those would actually have to be spent on the prorogation report itself. That would also, perhaps, provide a bit more flexibility to the House, which is under some administrative constraints, I understand. Perhaps we could find time for an extra meeting somewhere in there as well.
I think that this is reasonable. I like the fact that we still have a deadline both for finalizing the report, deciding all the questions and then tabling the report. I would not want to do this if it meant that we weren't going to begin our study of Bill C-19. I think this timeline provides time for us to be able to do both.
Thank you.