Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate all the comments and I appreciate the chair and people working together on this. I'd simply raise the concern that I've raised before.
We started this back in April, I guess, and we looked at what we wanted to prioritize at that time. Telecommunications was on the table, obviously, and there was unanimous consent, after a lot of debate, that we move away from that and go to manufacturing, because we all wanted to make sure that whatever we decided to do, we wanted to do a good and thorough job on a report that would end up in front of the House.
I am wondering what other witnesses were to be heard. You must have witnesses who want to come forward. I wonder why, since April, there hasn't been anything arranged for people to come forward with comments. Aside from that, I'm simply saying I don't want to lose track of the manufacturing, of what we have started to do.
Because of the debate today, we've cancelled important witnesses that were to be here. They're now not here, so we've done that. I only want to have confidence that we'll be able to move ahead on the manufacturing report from this committee. We've lost a day in terms of the manufacturing, with the telecommunications. Obviously, the witnesses aren't here today. I respect the chair's decision that because we wanted to have this debate, it wouldn't be appropriate to do so while the witnesses were sitting here. But again, I don't think any of us want to lose the prospect of the manufacturing report and getting it done on time.
I remember only three or four weeks ago, we were around the table discussing how we were going to complete the manufacturing debate and discussion in time to have the report, as we looked at the estimates and all the other things that were in front of us. So I put that in front of my colleagues from across the way. It doesn't have to be a long debate. It's simply that I think we all want to get to the end on the manufacturing and this is time taken away from that opportunity, that's all.