Just in rebuttal to that, if we had four witnesses at the end of the table, we'd be using the entire two hours and we'd only get through our scheduled rounds. That's just by adding an extra 30 minutes at the head of the table with statements. That happened quite often in the past at this committee as well as at other committees when we had four witnesses appear at one time. Today was an anomaly. We only had one.
The second part is that this is definitely only targeted toward the parliamentary secretary, not other members. If Nathaniel Erskine-Smith or Robert-Falcon Ouellette wanted to attend, I'd be more than happy and may even share my time with those two stand-up individuals. This would not prevent the NDP from sharing their time with one of their colleagues or if Elizabeth May or a Bloc member wanted to attend and participate and we felt that was definitely in line with the witnesses we had that day, I wouldn't be at all opposed to that.
I'm not trying to infringe upon Ms. Romanado's rights to share her time. This is about honouring the Liberal promise of removing the interference of parliamentary secretaries, although we know they still work behind the scenes. At the same time, we also know that Mr. McKay, as parliamentary secretary, is privileged to receive much more detailed briefings than what we're getting here from government officials. It's more important to hear from people who don't have that opportunity to question these witnesses rather than Mr. McKay.