Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll respond when my name is brought up.
I'm sorry that Mr. Brock finds it offensive, but Mr. Brock wasn't here when his colleagues filibustered this committee for hours and days and prevented us from getting to this issue and other things that were on the table. That's on the public record, and it was done within the House of Commons' time.
Yes, what we're discussing here is within the four weeks, which is what the request was. After that, if it is at the end of those four weeks, there will be only a few business days left before starting. This will be the first time, I believe, in my 18 years here at this committee that we will have business on the first day. In my 23 years in Parliament, this will be the first time we will deploy this committee to have meetings of substance immediately. That has never happened before. It might be the first time in the history of this committee.
I'm sorry that Mr. Brock is disappointed by that, but at the same time, when you're looking at trying to get public servants to come forward to do this properly and continue the studies that we have, why would we then try to force something to happen in the short term and re-employ everything right now versus in the few days that will be left over, when we could have this, we could start again and we could do it properly? We'll also have access to all of the features of the House of Commons to deal with it, which is going to be important because we're going to have an officer of Parliament here who's responsible to all of Parliament, not just this committee. We're also going to be able to provide enough time and a place to get a response from Ms. Verschuren. I can't remember if it was her or someone else we were close to having to subpoena to get them to this committee.
Given that we have those obstacles practically in front of us, that is one of the reasons I still believe it was reasonable to come here today to lay out our meeting. If we don't get this done today, then we will have to have another meeting or plan for that first meeting when we come back if we don't pass this.
I thought that was a decent compromise for everybody. It was a guarantee that this was going to happen. The full thing that we could have done today—and we still can—was to guarantee that when we resumed this House we would have gotten to an issue where there had been all-party support in many respects. There would have been different shades of it, but it would have still been there, and we could have made it happen right away and we could have had the full resources of the House.
I'll keep responding if we want to and if people are disappointed in me, because I'm not going to let it stand that we didn't come here and that we haven't been responsible. In fact, we've been consistently calling for further supports for this, including for the whistle-blowers. What I'll be looking for when we return is how we're actually going to make improvements for them.
I've had motions in the past that dealt with their situations, and I'll raise those on a continuing basis and try to employ opportunities for them to be heard as well.
This was a start, and I didn't even raise that component to add it here because I wanted to make sure we were going to get those meetings done right away. We're going to be able to hear from them in the meantime. They're going to hear this. Whether they're going to be interested in participating.... I have been in touch with a couple of them to hear what they're thinking. They're seeing what's going on here today. I'm going to be focusing on that and letting them get prepared to see what's going to happen. Those are the families of the people who, at the end of the day, we need to protect. Those are the people I'm most interested in, as well, because they've been left out there. They will get an opportunity now to see what has happened today, to see what's on the public record, to prepare themselves and to see what we're going to do as a committee. If they want to come forward at some point in time, I'll be proposing an opportunity to do so, but I want to make sure they are protected and they have the opportunity to do that.