Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for allowing me to speak again to the amendment as proposed.
On the suggestion of three meetings instead of four, my proposal is to have four meetings. The reason I suggested eight meetings in total is that these are substantive bills, both of them. I haven't allowed any time to talk about the establishment of the college. The committee members will remember that when we studied this issue, the committee was unanimous on this from all sides. The only time we had unanimous support was for the issue of the corporate consultants to be taken so seriously that the recommendation to the government was to end self-regulation.
Now what we have in that bill being proposed in the omnibus bill is to establish a college with the same people who ran the same system this committee has studied and determined had failed to protect the public.
These are substantive bills. For all the reasons I cited earlier with respect to the proposed changes to the refugee determination process, three meetings is not going to cut it. I really don't think we could do it in three, because in those three meetings you're also including officials and the minister. It only leaves two meetings for witnesses, and there are many witnesses who want to speak to this, just from the outpouring of emails that have crashed my system since Friday. More than 2,600 emails have come into my system just on this one issue. Imagine the desire among the public to shed light on this.
Frankly, I don't think this should be part of.... The timeline in which we need to meet shouldn't be subject to a budget timeline. The timeline that we meet on this should be based on what needs to be done to ensure that we do this thoroughly, to study it with due consideration and thoughtfully so we can then make the necessary recommendations.
I don't know whether there is any appetite on the other side to increase the numbers—