Further to Mr. Lessard's comments, I would be quite prepared when we consider this to look at a reasonable amendment to perhaps add some of the scope that Mr. Lessard is suggesting into this amendment, so we can have a vote on it. I'm not suggesting we vote on it now, for the reason I've said before. Mr. Martin from the NDP should be here because we have all made a commitment to him on poverty. I want to do this study very much. It's very important to me that we get started on that poverty study, so I don't want to take away from that.
This is one of the most significant announcements that could be made, to many Canadians: how the EI fund is going to be administered. There are large parts of this country that are very nervous about what this means. All we've seen so far on it is one page in the last budget that spoke about this fund. There's nothing in that one page to provide comfort to workers or to people who draw EI or may need to draw EI as the economy perhaps continues to worsen. It's a huge issue.
Madame Yelich suggested that I prejudged something. I haven't prejudged anything. That's why I think the government would welcome the opportunity to have people come and talk about what the mandate of this committee should be. The economy is in some trouble right now. We have a manufacturing sector and a forestry sector that are really struggling. We need to make sure any move we're involved in in this committee or as parliamentarians takes that into consideration.
I am prepared to put it on hold, as Mr. Lake suggested, for almost two weeks until the next meeting. When we do come back from the break, we're going to look at Mr. Godin's bill. If we move quickly on that, we could actually have this discussion at that meeting. I would be prepared to consider friendly amendments to this motion or other motions that Mr. Lessard may put forward.