If it's a serious problem, I'm not going to absolutely stand on my right to be the next speaker, but as I said, this is going to be my last intervention on this debate.
The honourable member has brought forward three motions. I guess it is actually fortuitous that he will be speaking later on. There is something I fundamentally do not understand about his motions, including the one we're debating now:
That the Committee immediately produce an interim report to the House related to its study of the March 31, 2011 deadline for infrastructure stimulus projects and that the report read as follows: The Committee recommends that the Government move immediately to extend the stimulus deadline by 6 months for all projects across Canada.
What I don't understand is that the honourable member moved another motion on the same day at the same time and that reads:
That the Committee hold a meeting on December 8, 2011, from 3:30-5:30 pm on the topic of the March 31, 2011 deadline for infrastructure stimulus projects and that municipal officials be invited to testify.
To my mind, there is a bit of a contradiction there in the motions. As I said, I'll ask the honourable member to explain this later on and to expand on why he has moved the two separate motions. Because it seems to make some sense to me that if we're going to do a report, with a conclusion, we should listen to all of the witnesses and all of the testimony that has been given before.
Now, it is very possible that we've heard all the witnesses and testimony that we need to hear on this. I'm of the view that we really don't need this December 8 meeting as well. But if he is moving for a December 8 meeting--and by my time, today is December 2--why would we do the report ahead of time? Why would we not wait until after the December 8 meeting?
My suggestion to the honourable member would be--because I do think he is serious about all of the motions he is moving here--that he amend or take off the table this motion we're currently debating and set it back, for after December 8. That would seem to make more sense to me, because it's very possible that if the motion for the December 8 meeting goes ahead and we actually have witnesses at the December 8 meeting, we'll get some information that will cause us to change our minds on his motion. It's possible that the witnesses may say something that may cause us to want to extend the deadline by three months, or we may not want to extend it at all.
I think it's unfair to call witnesses for a meeting and unfair to ask them to testify when we've already written our report. I realize this is a small report, and there could be other things one could add to that, but let's be realistic here: if you're going to have a report, you need to have all the witnesses listened to.
I'm actually going to ask the honourable member, when he does this, to table his motion. Then we could resume debating it after the December 8 meeting, assuming that one goes ahead, or at least after we see the results of the motion on December 8. How many more meetings there will be is a good question.
But I am not prepared to even consider any sort of report, let alone this report, until we know for sure that we've had all the meetings we're going to have and that there is no possibility whatsoever that we will see more witnesses. For me, it's a matter of simple fairness to the witnesses, and it's a matter of just basic common sense: you listen to all the witnesses before you have a report.
I hope the honourable member takes my suggestions into account. I hope he tables this one until after we've dealt with the other one, because while I think there are good points to be debated in all of his motions, perhaps he has the order of them mixed around. Perhaps he should reconsider the order of his motions and deal with them in a way that makes more logical common sense.