Thank you, Madam Chair.
I just wanted to raise a quick point of order with respect to the minister's recent appearance on the main estimates and report on plans and priorities. I know it involves Monsieur Lessard and I wanted him to be here when I raised the point. My colleagues and I had agreed to the minister appearing for a longer period of time. In fact, I believe it was for 90 minutes, and we were okay with that for the purpose, basically, of questioning the minister and of course allowing the minister to answer.
Monsieur Lessard posed probably some six minutes of questions without giving the minister an opportunity to respond. It is our view that those questions can be posed outside of the committee, if that's the desire, through questions on the order paper. But in the future, it would be my view that if we were supportive of the minister appearing here for that length of time, there should be an opportunity given to the minister to respond. I take objection to the fact that almost the entire seven minutes were used for questioning without a suitable response time being given. If we want the minister for a longer period of time, there needs to be give and take.