Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to raise two issues.
The first has to do with how the committee functions.
With all due respect, Madam Chair, as much as I appreciate the miracles you have managed to work since I've been on the committee, I must say that our sense of collegiality seems to be slowly slipping away. It fades every time we meet.
Clearly, I think that if proper subcommittee meetings were held more often, it would help ease some of the tension we're seeing. I'm not trying to force anything on you, but that is what I would strongly suggest. I think the committee should favour that approach.
It would probably also help us iron out the bulk of our work plans and thus avoid surprises and frustrating situations like this morning's, not to mention what happened at a meeting you unfortunately weren't at, Madam Chair. I think that's one solution that would help the committee get back to its former self.
As for possibly having to work on Bill C-49 in the summer, I would simply say that, if we must, we must. That was never the issue. The argument is that farmers are a priority, and I agree with that. In terms of the measures in Bill C-30, keep in mind that the priority according to farmers—the message they were championing—was that they would be happy to see the measures made permanent. I'm having a hard time, then, wrapping my head around how the government party can claim this is an absolute priority that we need to deal with as quickly as possible, when it opted to insert the measures into an omnibus bill. I'm well aware that this isn't the right place to debate the matter, but I would just point out that, if this is indeed a priority, one solution would be to take the measures out of the mammoth bill that is Bill C-49. That way, the committee could study the measures in a timely manner and make everyone happy.
Instead, the government is trying to fast-track consideration of an omnibus bill that affects just about every sector of transportation, including grain transportation, which has a direct impact on farmers.
Truth be told, Bill C-49 could be divided into a number of bills. Even though the government has absolutely no intention of doing this, it seems to me that, if it wanted to give priority treatment to farmers, the best option would be to extract the provisions from Bill C-49 related to Bill C-30 . It could then make Bill C-30 the priority and refer it to our committee. That way, we could deal with the matter expeditiously while following through on the government's wish to prioritize farmers and deliver the support they are expecting from us.