Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My apologies to the witnesses.
I somewhat agree with Ms. Mendes with regard to the witnesses being here, but if the chair has decided that this issue is a point of order to come first, we'll just simply say that Mr. Dechert said most of what I have to say, so I'll keep my comments rather brief.
My comments are not for the members of this committee. My comments are for the people of Canada, if they're listening to this. I've been on other committees. I'm on one other very important committee, public safety. We have agreed to sit longer hours. Members are able to get replacements, as we can see around this table, whenever it's necessary to get replacements if we have other exigencies of our positions as members of Parliament. We can sit longer. It is possible to sit longer. The House itself sits longer when it's necessary to do so. The argument that we don't have.... We are all very time-constrained and we have other members of our caucus to rely upon. This is, as I said for the people of my riding and the people of Canada, an obvious attempt.... We see it on other committees and we're seeing it in the House. This is an obvious attempt by the official opposition to slow down government business so that it can say nothing got done in this Parliament.
We had a previous agreement on this committee to sit longer hours. If that's the wish of the opposition, to listen to more witnesses, we can do so by sitting longer hours. I know our witnesses care very much about what evidence they're going to present to us and that they would accommodate us in order to do that. This is an obvious attempt, and I'm not going to say it again, but this is an obvious attempt to slow down the business of the governance of this country and the legislation we pass, for political reasons.
Thank you.