Thank you, Madam Chair.
I understand where Mr. Savard-Tremblay is coming from on this. In past committees, we've had the minister multiple times at the industry committee. We've had the finance minister at the finance committee. What normally happens when you ask for a two-hour meeting is you get one hour with the minister and one hour with officials. Mr. Champagne has been most gracious. In a lot of meetings, he'll give us another ten minutes, depending on how important the topic is.
What I would respectfully ask is we try to get the four meetings. It doesn't mean we'll get the minister, and as Mr. Genuis noted, we may not, but I think this is such an important topic for allowing these four ministers to be available. What they do is they bring officials, including their deputies, who normally are more knowledgeable on some of the bigger issues. I think the government's going to be interested in trying to explain a lot of what's happening. I think we four opposition members are going to try to get a lot more answers about what is happening. For the democratic process, this allows the most amount of time to be available, not just for the ministers, but for the departments to be able to come and answer to the public about what is happening. As we've stated, this is not a little issue. This is the major issue right now in Canada.
I think the second one is that Mr. Savard-Tremblay has mentioned three meetings, which would be seven. I would respectfully ask if perhaps he'd be open to setting a meeting, but being open to more meetings, if that became a priority for this committee. That means that with the subcommittee—and I know we've stated that we have Standing Order 106(4) meetings if there are major emergencies, and we know other things are happening—if he could respond, the request I'd ask for is whether, if we found we needed some more witnesses on a certain subject or we found that the situation had evolved, because we don't know now what we're going to know probably in a week or three weeks, he'd be open to making that open-ended. I'd maybe ask him, Madam Chair, if he's on the speaking list, to speak to that.