I certainly hope I can. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
There are a couple of issues here, obviously. I think I've been fairly clear in explaining my reasons why, and I'm a little disappointed that this is somehow going to become a debatable point. For the government, we certainly would like to get EFTA off the books. We'd like to do that by Wednesday of next week. We're prepared to have extra meetings if there are some members who have not had an opportunity to come to committee or want to be on the record for political reasons, or whatever.
This process went on for some time, long before I got to this committee. I think our study of the EFTA agreement is basically completed, except for the clause-by-clause; but if there are more witnesses, then we would be accommodating and agree to hear them.
There's not the same rush with the study of the Colombia agreement. I can't say that we can put it off until September, but certainly I agree with Monsieur Cardin that the priority of the government is to have the EFTA agreement get through committee, and to be able to put our regulatory regime in place. That's a very legitimate concern and not one that I'm suddenly pulling out of thin air. And, quite frankly, the hearings are over; we've heard all we can hear about EFTA, but we will hear more if you have more people you want to bring to committee. But on the Colombia study, we just don't have that same urgency.