Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am not the chair, but my experience has been, particularly on the agriculture committee, that there can be a considerable amount of correspondence that can flow back and forth between witnesses and the chair. It can be e-mail, it can be phone calls, it can be letters. If a witness asks for a particular letter to be distributed to committee, it is generally distributed to committee if it is received in bilingual format. If they send a presentation and ask that it be distributed to committee members and it has been submitted in bilingual format, it is normally distributed to committee members.
But if the chair just receives a letter from a witness and the witness does not ask for it to be submitted to committee members, then the chair, at least in my humble opinion, is not obligated to distribute it to committee members. Quite frankly, I don't think I should see every single piece of correspondence that flows in to the chair, when the person sending the correspondence has not asked for it to be distributed to committee members.
So maybe the chair later can tell us whether the witnesses asked for it to be distributed or whether they did not ask for it to be distributed. That's an important factor. But for my part, I don't want to see all your correspondence, Chair. I'd like to see correspondence that the witnesses have asked to be distributed to committee members. That's what I would like to see.