Madam Chair, on a point of order, I want to thank Mr. Garrison for that. I apologize to you as well, sir, if you in any way took my comments the wrong way. I wasn't aware of what you experienced in the House, so I do apologize for that.
I'm really confused, Chair. I know ministerial time is very precious. For the last two years I have been frustrated in my ability to speak with various ministers, so we always look for opportunities to have ministers appear at committee. We agreed, I believe as a committee, if not at the subcommittee level, to have Minister Virani appear on or before today's date, December 7.
Obviously a unilateral decision was made, without consultation with committee members, which bypassed his appearance. I'm confused as to why Bill C-40 and clause-by-clause have taken priority over the minister, when we probably agreed at the subcommittee level that both should be priorities for this committee.
I want to draw everyone's attention to the first page of Bill C-40, which I copied off the computer earlier today. There's a recommendation under Bill C-40 that is as follows:
Her Excellency the Governor General recommends to the House of Commons the appropriation of public revenue under the circumstances, in the manner and for the purposes set out in a measure entitled “An Act to amend the Criminal Code, to make consequential amendments to other Acts and to repeal a regulation”
This requires the allocation of taxpayer money, and the allocation of taxpayer money is at the root of what appearances and discussions on the supplementary estimates flow from. Again, I could be the only one who's confused on this issue—and if I am, I apologize—but I thought that, given the circumstances and given the recommendation in this bill, as in other bills where there's an allocation of taxpayer money, a priority should be given to the minister. That concerns me.
What also concerns me, Madam Chair, is your statement that the supplementary estimates process has been completed without any input from any committee member at the justice level. I'd like to know how that happened, because I had a number of questions for Minister Virani on the allocation of money for Bill C-40, among other issues, in relation to the content of Bill C-40 clause-by-clause, and I'm missing out on this opportunity.
As I said, I've always had great difficulty.... I will throw a recommendation for consideration to Marco Mendicino, a colleague of ours, a former minister, who always had an open door policy. I never had any difficulty speaking with former minister Mendicino on any particular issue then—