I'd like to pick up on what Mr. St. Amand said, and I support one of Mr. Harris's comments very strongly, and support Mr. Cullen.
It's really difficult for witnesses to speak for less than 10 minutes and encapsulate...I speak as a person who is new to Parliament but who spent many hours preparing to appear before committees in a previous life, and it's very difficult to hold oneself to 10 minutes when one is dealing with a complexity of the kind we're going to be dealing with.
I would rather see a general approach where we reduce the number of witnesses and have a more fulsome and probing discussion with those witnesses, but I would also strongly support something Mr. Harris said. I really do not like to see witnesses appear here without having delivered to us, say 24 hours before their appearance, a five-page executive summary of what they're going to say. That is common practice in most places today, so I would certainly support Mr. Harris. I think Mr. Harris mentioned this. It would be very useful for us to have a quick synopsis--three or four pages, five maximum, perhaps. To receive, as members, disparate kinds of documents--some translated, some not--on time.... I think it would be fairly easy, Mr. Chairman, for the clerk to frame some kind of general parameters for witnesses' documents as they submit them to committee.