That's fair. I don't think she said she'd spend a month reading the motion. Look, I just got the motion five minutes ago, and I'm trying to read it while I'm listening to you, Mr. Angus. I think that was her point. As I said earlier, there's a lot in there. There's some good stuff in there, and I'd like to give it some consideration.
Just to be clear, I don't want to wait until the end of January, the beginning of February, to come back here and have this discussion again either, but there is a compromise. It is that the subcommittee—and Mr. Angus, you're going to be on it, as will Mr. Simard, and I'm not sure who the Conservative members are—could meet sometime in January before the House starts sitting.
I would suggest that, at that subcommittee meeting, a number of motions be considered. We'd come out of there with recommendations, on the assumption that subcommittee members from the Liberals and the Conservatives go in there fully authorized to decide what goes first, so that, between the time of that meeting and the time Parliament resumes, we can actually then agree on witnesses and start the meetings right away, rather than losing more time.
The other problem is that, if we agree on this motion or any other motion today and then we go, we still have to figure out who the witnesses are going to be. This group, collectively, has to be involved in that discussion, in my view. We're all going to submit lists of witnesses. We have to agree on it, and perhaps vote on it. There's going to be overlap. I'm not trying to slow down the process. Quite the contrary, I'm trying to accelerate the process. I want to come back at the end of the month and get going right away too. I think the easiest way to do that, to accomplish everybody's goal, is to do as I suggest and have a subcommittee meeting then.
Mr. Angus, you face the possibility that—and you don't want to see this and I don't want to see this—if we're forced to vote on this now, some people might vote no just so they can move on to discuss the next motion, even though there are some parts of this motion of yours that they would like to support. I don't want to see it dismissed or voted on for reasons that aren't totally based on merit.
That's where I'm coming from. I'm not trying to slow things down. I'm not trying to put somebody else's motions ahead of yours or anything else like that. I just want to make sure that we're all able to take in all of the information that we have available to us—and we haven't heard it all yet—so that when we do come back, we can start off on that very first day.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.