Let's move on to the matter at hand, the Atlantic Canadian immigration study. This, to me, is a matter of.... It's a longitudinal study. We unanimously supported in the House of Commons the motion that my colleague, Ms. Lockhart, brought, to bring this study to committee, but we didn't unanimously support the length of the study, and we didn't unanimously support having the study happen at the expense of not studying other issues that could be of equal or greater import to the immediacy of the study.
My experience in Parliament has been that when you have a longitudinal study like this, typically it can be interrupted by things like the minister appearing to testify on supplementary estimates. The minister did not do so this time, so we're actually going to be voting on supplementary estimates without the minister appearing before committee to be questioned on them. That's not transparent.
The government does have a majority on this committee, and they can do with it what they will. I would like to say that the government campaigned on greater transparency and greater effectiveness. My argument has always been, why can't we intersperse even short studies on these issues with what's going on here?
I think what my colleague, Mr. Tilson, has proposed is a very elegant solution. It recognizes that this study is important, but it also recognizes the fact that we have two outstanding reports in front of this committee.
I think we have near unanimous support across party lines to do something on one, and that's the immigration consultants study. We all heard very harrowing testimony on the need to change the status quo, yet we haven't been able to table that report.