Chair, I recognize there are significant frustrations within the committee. It's shared by many, many people. But notwithstanding making the arguments and/or any allegations from this committee at this point regarding any testimony that might come from Madame Ouimet, the fact remains she's not here. The fact remains we have to deal with that. We have to find the options available to us and then move on it.
There's a lot of discussion on this file, but I would suggest that if we can't get to deciding what we can or can't do within the parameters of this committee, we're going nowhere.
So I would certainly ask the clerk, through the chair, to explore the options that we have available to us--in concert with Mr. Christopherson's comments, which are basically the same thing. Once we know what we can and can't do, and also, we don't need to duplicate something that the government operations committee is doing or isn't doing at the same time. There should be communication between the two committees.
We do need to have a clear sense of direction, because there's no doubt that we cannot leave this outstanding. Non-attendance is not acceptable, and we have to deal with it. This is an issue that is not going to go away, period. It will be dealt with at the first convenience. We do need to know our options so we can deal with them.