Mr. Chairman, I would like to briefly raise three points. Regarding Mr. Lord, he will come when he can. We will clear our schedule and Mr. Lord will then decide which issues he feels he can address. We will see when that happens. It is not up to the committee to determine in advance which questions we will put to him. He will decide which issues he will address.
Further, I don't really like the fact that Ms. Verner wants to wait for the report to be tabled before appearing before the committee. In that case, the committee would be held hostage by the timing of the report's release by the government. If Ms. Verner decides to table her report in one, three or six months, it would mean that the committee could not invite her before then. That doesn't make any sense.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, we must never forget that the raison d'être of this committee is to look after the interests of minority language communities. That's why we are here. But too often we seem to forget this. There is too much petty politics on this committee, which means that we just can't do our work. Ultimately, it's the communities who pay.