Mr. Chair, you gave at the outset a fairly broad-brush sketch, if you will, of some of the issues the committee may be interested in. I want to go back to Mr. Fontana's comments, and I appreciate the parliamentary secretary's responses as to the availability of the minister.
As a committee, as you quite rightly pointed out, we don't have bills before us. As a first step, it would be helpful to get an idea of where the minister sees his department and sees the overall economic performance of the country. We haven't had this kind of overview in some time. A lot, of course, has happened, so I would ask the parliamentary secretary, if I could, to get back to us on Thursday with a date--that this be almost a first order of business, just as an idea of where we're going and how we're going to get there.
It's good to have the various recommendations we've talked about. We have had discussions among our own colleagues; there is interest in areas of manufacturing, aerospace, gasoline, and of course research and development, science and technology. Those tend to be areas in which there could be consensus, considering the involvement of other members, but first and foremost, I think it's absolutely imperative that we have the minister here.