Thanks, Chair.
I think people need to get their calendars out. May 31 is when we start Jack's study. We then have what's proposed with the border study, something that has already been looked at by the Auditor General. In my view, I would hardly make that an emergency. I think you need to look at your calendars. May 31 we start Jack's study. Then we have the border. Then we have the Levesque study to go through. You can't possibly say that by delaying this it will not kill the report—unless everyone on this committee is prepared to sit through the summer—because there is no way we can do the work that's proposed before we get to this study.
Either we feel that this is an important study that we need to do...and actually, the reason the Liberals sent in this letter is that we do feel that this is an emergency. We do feel that this is something that needs to take priority at this committee. It's also something that has never been studied by this committee. This is an emerging issue. I had heard about it, but I was not aware of the severity of it until I read Mr. McGuinty's report. I think every single person on this committee should be seized with studying this right away.
I mean, we can all say that we want to work together, and I'm not trying to be confrontational here, but the fact is that we will never get to this study if we do it after we do all the other work we have. Either we want to look at this pressing issue...which Mr. McGuinty himself said was the most striking thing about the review. All you have to do is look online, at all of the issues that are there, to know that.
I know we're only debating the amendment here, so I'm getting ahead of myself, except to say that if we remove the words that we start “immediately” and start on “May 10th”, we will in fact effectively kill this motion, unless we decide right now that we're going to pick some other dates to do it at the end of May and the beginning of June. Otherwise, this will never happen.
Thanks, Chair.