Thank you, Madam Chair. Congratulations on your appointment.
I agree with what Mr. Garrison has put forward.
I do not believe we should reduce the time limit from 10 minutes to five minutes, and I will tell you why.
We heard from Mr. Virani and Mr. Maloney, who referenced being litigators, but many of the witnesses who appear before us are not lawyers or litigators. It's their first time appearing in a very intimidating format. If what we're saying is that upon arrival, someone who has prepared a 10-minute statement would then be told that, by the way, they only have five minutes, I could foresee that causing more angst for someone who's probably already under a lot of pressure.
I think of the bills we're going to be receiving and the studies we're going to be doing. Not everyone is going to have the kind of experience to be able to handle that.
I would propose a friendly amendment to the friendly amendment and say maybe seven and a half or eight minutes. If we have three witnesses and we reduce their time from 10 to eight or seven and a half minutes, that picks up quite a bit of time that we may have wasted due to technical difficulties. The onus is on us to get our technical challenges under control. I don't want to put any more pressure on witnesses than they are already under.
I think cutting their time in half is a bit too much if what we're proposing is that it would be done on the spot. I would say, at the most, reduce the time to seven and a half minutes.