Yes, thank you. I sense there is a consensus here, and in fact, perhaps before we go to Monsieur Godin next, the sense I'm getting is that we're all on the same wavelength here. We want to allow the witnesses to say their piece but not go on forever. There are obviously going to be some differences, if there's a group, if we have more than one.
I think one of the key elements to make this work better is going to be the instructions the clerk gives to potential witnesses as they come in, as suggested by Mr. McGuinty, Ms. Bell, and Mr. Harris, and that is we should just make it clear that their brief will be limited to 10 pages with attachments, if there are any, that there's to be an executive summary, and that we do have this provided to the committee 24 hours before the committee meeting, in both official languages. They must be prepared. I think it works out better for the witnesses as well as for us, and we can determine it, and then we'll flow with the will of the meeting and the discretion of the chair in each case.
As our researcher suggested to me briefly a moment ago, there are occasions, of course, when we're going to have ministers here on estimates, we're going to have briefings from departments, and we might just want them to go on a little longer in terms of where they're coming from before we get to questions. So I think we're going to have to leave a little latitude, but I think the general consensus we seem to be getting here is that what's important is firm instructions from the clerk to potential witnesses ahead of time.
With that, I'll go to Mr. Cardin.