Absolutely, Chair, I have faith in you, and I know that you can do the right thing. I am not speaking ill of you. I am just calling out what has happened over the past number of months that I have been a member of this committee, to try to bring some order to this committee.
Chair, I know that you're trying to do your best. I know how difficult it is for the clerks to find witnesses and fill in the schedules, etc. However, the fact that we keep amending our meetings and the fact that we keep calling unexpected meetings is difficult. The meeting here today has cost taxpayers over $10,000. Can you imagine $10,000 for three hours in which we could have been supporting our constituents and had this in our sitting week?
Therefore, what I'm trying to say to you, Chair, is that this motion is a proposition as to how we are going to conduct ourselves over the coming weeks. We have five long weeks in Ottawa when we are going to be able to do all the work that is on your agenda and on all of our members' agendas. We just need some kind of decorum. We just need some kind of ability to have certainty, not only in our own schedules but also in the schedules of our constituents, so that when they schedule meetings to come to see me, for example, I don't have to cancel on them at the last minute just so I can appear here.
Therefore, Chair, I submit that to you. I am very much in support of this motion, and I'm hopeful that members of our committee are also, because what this motion would do is give us clarity. It would give us a concrete work plan, for which we have been waiting for a very long time, for months in fact, with a work plan that keeps changing and we keep fidgeting around with. Here we are in a surprise meeting on a Tuesday. I don't know why we are doing this, but I'm hopeful that this motion brings concreteness and stability to our committee.
Again, Chair, I respect the work that you do, and I look forward to continuing to work with you, I'm hoping, in a more collaborative way than we have so far. I'll leave my remarks there, Chair, and I look forward to continuing with this debate.