This is a new provision, and legislating a timeline for the responses is, in the government's view, a very important new accountability measure that's being introduced here.
The government is proposing six months for a few reasons.
One is, as my RCMP colleague has said, that it is known to be a workable timeline because the commission and the RCMP work on that timeline now. That is, in fact, the timeline that was recommended by the chair of the commission to the minister and, I believe, to the committee here, and that also responds to the recent Federal Court jurisprudence that examined the adequacy of responses of the RCMP to the commission, in which the Federal Court identified six months as the appropriate length of time.
This provision in the bill is a response to the most recent Federal Court decision on the matter.