No, I haven't finished.
Therefore, in talking about the request for an extension of 30 sitting days here.... We are not talking about 30 calendar days; we are talking about 30 sitting days. So the timeline would not be into July or August. The days would start counting and it would actually go into September, and probably right into October, because of how late we start in September.
I think in the meantime, when you look at it, we will have already heard from our witnesses and a great deal of time would have gone by. Once again, I feel we will be doing a disservice to Mr. Shory's bill because we will be leaving too huge a time between clause-by-clause, as you have aptly said. We bypass that simply because of the timelines. So just because the timelines have played out, that is no reason to try to set the clock differently. That's what I'm arguing here.
For me, it does a disservice to a private member's bill when you can have that huge a distance between different components of dealing with the bill. It also loses some of the currency during that time. I would say that depending on what happens during those 30 days, that could also fundamentally change how we are going to be proceeding with this, because there is no guarantee that within the extension of 30 days you could actually get the concurrent motion dealt with in the House. There is no guarantee, and because there is no guarantee, I feel we're going through this exercise for very little reason.
To me, that is a compelling argument when you're talking for or against an extension, because at the end of the day, the private member's business gets reported back on the 60th day—within 60 days. The 60 days will be up. This gives only an extension for 30 days. It doesn't give any other direction for the committee to deal with this any differently. All it says is 30 days so that the government can get the expansion in the scope. But if within those 30 days the government cannot get an expansion, then unfortunately we are at the bill having been reported. That's exactly where we are today.
I feel that the committee has really important work to do. I know we were in the middle of a study on temporary foreign workers. I know that we have a great deal of interest in pursuing a study on citizenship and the huge wait lists that exist. We also want to talk about PNPs and many other issues. So when I think of the time of the committee being tied up to do a private member's bill that is already running out of time...I would say that those are new arguments being put forward as to why an extension at this stage is not the right thing to do.
I know some of my colleagues are getting a little bit frustrated and are shaking their heads, but I think it is a legitimate point to be made that the committee's business is far more than this private member's bill. As a matter of fact, we were in the middle of hearing witnesses. Witnesses were waiting the day this all started—
