Yes, Madam Chair, I would like to suggest.... I agree with Madame Bourgeois and Madame Mourani. We're all saying the same thing here to some degree.
Could I suggest a way to go so that if there is agreement we can move in that direction?
First, of course, everyone has said they've looked at the reports they've received and they need to know what the government's position is. We don't want to have to rewrite those. There was agreement, I think, to some degree last time, that subsequent to us having seen them, they would be retabled. So we could probably do that as a first step. That wouldn't take a great deal of work from us except to retable the reports.
Second would be that we agree to start working on aboriginal matrimonial rights, and we make that our first priority in terms of the work we're going to do. I think Madame Bourgeois and Madame Mourani and others are in agreement.
I think we can work on more than one project as we slot them, but we will make that our first priority.
Thirdly, because there is already a report on pay equity, that would be our third priority. It's not third in the sense that it's not important, but it's third in the sense that there's a report there already, and we want to hear from the government whether it's going to table legislation. This is more a way of monitoring what's happening with pay equity and where we are going and where the government is going. That wouldn't take a great deal of effort on the part of the committee either, given the fact that the report has already been done.
On the aboriginal issue again--just to go back for a moment--we wouldn't want to redo the report. We should first study the report done by the aboriginal committee, because there has been a great deal of work done, and then decide what additional information we want to gather, as Madam Neville has said--the impact of Bill C-31 is one, and we'll see if there is anything else. So we could all read the report and decide how we proceed from there, and then have people come in.
Following that, I would suggest that we could then slot in the issue of violence against women, which includes sexual assault, human trafficking, and the subtext of these, and then economic security, and then we can see how our agenda goes. Obviously, we aren't going to be able to do all these studies that we want, depending on if we are able to break up with some structure.
I would suggest to my colleagues that we follow that order. Table the reports the government will give us, start work on the aboriginal group committee and immediately start reading the report, and have a joint meeting with the committee as we agreed we would do. Then send a request on the government's plans with respect to pay equity. I imagine that when the minister comes, we could have that discussion with her and then follow with the other two topics, time permitting. There is only so much time we have, and I think we need to maximize the time we have on reports, on work that's already been done, either by our committee or by other committees. That allows us to maximize our time, I would suggest.