Thank you very much for that welcome. I'm glad to be here.
I want to start by saying that we certainly support the principle of trying to get to an early study of this bill, given the time constraints we find ourselves under. There is a little bit of frustration there, because I think these dates are not surprise dates or dates that came up suddenly. These are deadlines that have long been established. I think it's always preferable to get to work sooner on these things. Many of the income support proposals, certainly the legislative side of them, had this kind of eleventh hour aspect to them when they came to Parliament in the fall...and the prorogation that we all know about. I'm looking at Mr. Long. He sat in on some of the procedure and House affairs committee meetings where we discussed that in great detail.
I do think at a certain point it's incumbent on government to get a handle on these deadlines so that we're not always curtailing parliamentary process, but we will have to continue to do that in some way, shape or form in order to provide support to Canadians. It's not a choice that I think we should have to make. I do beseech the government to get its act together and bring things forward in a more timely way.
That said, I want to speak to some of the details of the proposal, because I think getting down to an early study is helpful. That could help expedite the process. I want to note that the bill was introduced, and we're now being asked to set a pretty rigid schedule for how it will proceed at committee before parties have even had an opportunity to meet in their normal Wednesday caucus meeting. I believe the bill was tabled at the last sitting Thursday, and we haven't had a sitting Wednesday yet. The deadline in the motion for proposed amendments is tomorrow at five o'clock. That seems to me to be pretty short.
I notice also that there are members in the House whose parties don't have a seat at this table who will find out, if the committee decides to pass this motion, either very late today or early tomorrow that they have less than a day to contact the legislative counsel and try to prepare any amendments. It seems to me that the amendment deadline given, when we don't know when the bill is going to come to the committee, is a little tight. I would like to try to make some room for a little more time to be able to consider potential amendments. That would be either by striking paragraph (e), which has the deadline, or by having a caveat that would say that people have to submit amendments essentially within a sitting day of the bill passing through the House.
I think there's some flexibility there. I don't want it to get in the way of making progress today in terms of getting the study under way. I think there should be some allowance made for the fact that there are members who may yet know nothing about this plan for the bill and who nevertheless will have an interest in the bill and will need time to prepare any suggestions that they want to make constructively to the committee.