I agree with your recommendations so far. I think we should move quickly to deal with Bill C-50. In fact, I have names of some witnesses here today to table with the clerk.
I'd actually like to see us get this done next week, if we could. My initial thoughts were that we would have one day of witnesses and then a day of clause-by-clause. I'm certainly open to as well, and would probably welcome the presence of, ministry officials for a session and the minister herself to come and talk to us about this amendment and to answer any questions we might have. That might take three days, or perhaps four, but I would not like to see us go beyond that. Personally, I think we have a lot of people out there who are waiting and wanting this relief that will come, if and when we pass this amendment, so that they can deal with the challenges of daily living. That would be my first comment.
I was hoping as well that in the interest of getting a study done that's very important, that we've put a lot of effort and time into so far, crossing two parliaments, we would move to try to finish the study on poverty. I would recommend that we agree that we are in fact going to travel, with perhaps a week out west, where we could hit some of the communities agreed upon earlier, and we might also, while we're there, get up into the territories or to an aboriginal community.
I also want to see whether we could somehow spend at least a day in a rural area so that we get a sense of that. I had suggested earlier that Saskatchewan might be a good place to do that, although Mr. Komarnicki tells me there's no more poverty in Saskatchewan. We might want to check that out for ourselves and see if that's true or not, but we would do that.
I put forward today the request that we travel as part of the western leg of the poverty tour, so we can actually put a request before the committee that determines and agrees to the resources necessary to do that, and we can get that moving now. When that is approved, we can look for a week when we can see ourselves clear to do that.
We can deal with the other private members' bills in between and try to get as much work done as we can between now and the Christmas break, in the interest of trying to assist the significant number of people out there in our constituencies who are challenged in this difficult economic time.