Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Obviously I don't think we would have any problem working on government bills. Legislative bills always take priority. But I would want to make sure that we did proper hearings. There are quite a lot of organizations that want to come before us. I don't have a problem with what Mr. Martin suggested, but we don't know yet—maybe the clerk will tell us—how many organizations have already indicated that they might wish to appear.
I know we have some names, and I would imagine there will be an overlap with some of them. So we will have to see who wants to appear and decide how many we will take, and why, where, and so on, or how many of them we can even do with video conferencing and what have you. That could be utilized as well. You don't have to travel across the country, necessarily, to talk to people.
But I would like to see, at some point soon, us finishing the poverty program report. It's a very important report. It is extremely important in this country that we start addressing this issue. This study will hopefully have some impact or give some direction for government and for all of us to actually start implementing.
The hearings have to be finished quickly. I would suggest that we could split up, with part of the committee going west, part of it going north, and then, at some point, part of it going rural. The last time we split, it wasn't really a split, because we were only allowed two members to travel, or one per party at a time. It's not like the other members were somewhere else; they just didn't go anywhere. If we were to do as the finance committee does and be allowed to actually split and do some additional work, that might be helpful.
That means not everybody gets to hear everything, but certainly the researchers will be able to bring back and collate the information for us.