I did, Mr. Chairman. I'll try to be brief.
I have really thought about this over and over again, in the spirit of excellent cooperation in this committee that I've served on for so long. It's like reinventing the wheel, if I may just pick up from the comments, and I say this with the greatest of respect to the Manley team.
My good friend the parliamentary secretary, Laurie Hawn, talked about parliamentarians' interests, if I may quote: “question other witnesses”, “helping us make a decision”, “concise report”, “for public information”, “take other suggestions”. Out of all that I quoted, the one thing I can really allow some validity to is “take other suggestions”. All the other comments that I've tried to quote, my good friend, are in areas, Mr. Chairman—through you to the committee—that we belaboured for such an extensive period of time and through dozens and dozens of witnesses.
I would find it useless to call in other witnesses, because I think, with all due respect, we exhausted the witnesses we were looking to bring before the committee as we were putting our report on Afghanistan together—from academics, from former military people, experts in the military field, etc.
I also—and I'm very polite with this word—find it in some ways insulting to the committee, both current members and previous members, who had invested so much time and effort and zeal to put that report together.
I now have—thank you to our clerk—the response from the government. I'm going through it right now, so I'm not in a position to even comment and compare yet. I hope over the next little while to do so. I'm going through the Manley report, and my question on the Manley report, to which I already have the answers, is that I don't even think they met with one-tenth of the people we met, the experts. We unfortunately didn't have the opportunity to be on site, as they were, to see firsthand—at least I did not.... I know some members had the opportunity to visit, and you did the good work that you did.
The other concern, and I close with this, Mr. Chairman, is this. We know the time constraints when it comes to committee work. Each party has an allotment of a specific time, five minutes and so on. I would find it useless if we did not have a completely open session of unlimited time, if I may use that word, to get into the guts of asking this panel or others to indulge in exchange with us. Speaking for myself, if I'm going to have five minutes in a second round for my questions and the answers I hope to get, I don't think I'm going to get very far.
So with that, I have great reservations, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.