I just want to make a couple of remarks.
One, we're talking about a few days, and in fairness, this committee did authorize a witness to be called. It's now saying we don't need to call the witness, even though we thought it was the right thing to do at one point.
The second point, which Mr. Devolin has indicated, is that as recently as within the last two or three weeks, we had three former ministers who either didn't vote to support the bill or opposed it. We do have their comments from the past on the record, which state that when the RAD was envisioned there was a backlog. The backlog went down. They were concerned about the fact that adding another layer—ust as was indicated today—would add additional time to a system that's not functioning as well as it should. The reason they didn't implement, they said in the past, was because of the very issue that had concerned them: passing it without regard to the rest of the system.
There may be other reasons, but certainly people who were in the department saw how it worked and went through the history of it. It is not inappropriate to have one of them, at least, who opposed the bill indicate why they would oppose RAD when some of your members are supporting it. They may have some valid reasons that are recent. I appreciate the history of it, but the history of it would indicate an opposition. Presently they are opposing it, as we speak. It would not be out of order to have them appear at this committee and ask them why they oppose it at this late date, given their past positions.
I would certainly amend the motion to allow for any one or three of those previous ministers to appear before this committee to deal specifically with why they voted as they did on this particular bill in either abstention or opposition.