I agree with you.
I started by reminding everyone that this is the end of September 2023. Yet the government tabled this bill in June 2022 and we are learning today that there will be substantial amendments. They are not minor amendments because they involve the privacy of Canadians. The government just told us today that, finally, this will be addressed within the bill and not in the preamble. These are absolutely fundamental aspects of the bill, and we are just learning about them today.
As soon as you decided to make the amendments that you are tabling today, we should have had a copy of them then. How do you expect us to work with the witnesses and ask them questions? I have a question for Mr. Schaan because we would normally have been here at 3:30 this afternoon. We would have had questions for the government officials. But how would they have been able to answer without having the amendments in front of them? That's not how it works.
I have a lot of difficulty understanding the process that led to such fundamental amendments being tabled today, a year and a half after the bill was introduced. On Thursday, in two days, we will be talking to witnesses about amendments that we don't even have. That's not going to work.