Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I agree with MP Brunelle-Duceppe that it's really.... I'm sure we all agree with this, but there are two things that I think need to happen.
One is that in the past, prior to the Christmas break, I felt that we tested the microphones with the witnesses before they came, not 15 minutes before but days before. Maybe that was another committee. I'm on four, so I don't know which one is which now, but it felt like they had headsets and were very prepared. We didn't run into the same situation in the same way when we were looking at the Uighur genocide, for example. It felt like maybe there were things we did before that maybe we could do again.
The other piece that I think is also really important—and I'm going to be doing this for the New Democratic Party—is that our whips need to know. I think we need to go to our parties and explain that this process is not working and is unfair to certain members of the committee. Don't get me wrong. My French is not as good as it needs to be, so it is unfair to me as well. I don't want Alexis to feel like this is his problem. This is all our problem, of course.
We could maybe run through what could be done on that end with the whips and then they could take that piece, but we could also see if there is a way to do test runs with the witnesses. These witnesses have vitally important information they are going out of their way—and risking their lives in some cases—to share with us, and it's unfortunate when it ends up this way.
I, like Alexis, don't blame anyone. It's just a system we're stuck in, but I think there might be solutions there.