Yes, Madam Chair, I was just going to add that I support the motion, obviously because basically the idea that I had is just to compel them in some manner to decide when they will appear, so it's not an optional thing to do. It's a very reasonable motion. It doesn't tell them when they're supposed to appear. They're just supposed to inform us of the date that they're picking to appear before the committee. Should they fail to do that, we're basically asking for the House to be made aware of it so the House itself can act upon it.
This has been done many times, either when witnesses refuse to appear and you really want their testimony before the committee so you can put it into the record, or when they make it difficult by cancelling out or saying their schedule is very busy. We're all very busy. We all have busy schedules, but accountability works. Ministers are accountable to Parliament. This committee was created by Parliament to hold ministers accountable.
Accountability flows down to us. We're not accountable to the ministers. That's not the way it's supposed to work. It's based on what our schedule says and when our meetings are, which have been designated by the whips' offices and by the House, and the ministers should find the time in their schedules to make themselves available.
I know ministers are very busy. They know parliamentary committees will ask them to appear. They've known since October that, at some point in the future, they would be asked to appear before this committee to explain themselves on Afghanistan and what happened there. Then there's an outcome for all these refugees and displaced persons all over the world who are looking to come to Canada.
It's just part of that accountability and transparency work that we're trying to get done. At the very minimum, this is a very reasonable motion. We're not immediately reporting to the House that they failed to reply and failed to satisfy this committee, but that they simply made it difficult to do our work, that they're frustrating the work of this committee by making it difficult to schedule it with our calendars. I don't care about their calendars. I care about the calendar of this committee to make sure we can fulfill our work plan.
As I said before, we have only four free meetings thus far, which will make it very difficult to ensure that we can also look at all the spending plans of the government, both for the end of the past fiscal year and for the next fiscal year. I think it's an infinitely reasonable motion. We're giving the ministers a last chance to give us a date when they'll appear with their officials.