Thank you, Madam Chair.
My thanks to Mr. Badawey for this motion.
The first thing is that the date of our work does not matter to me. We are elected to do this work. As soon as it is necessary, we will be there. It could be in July, August or September. That's not really the issue.
However, there are some questions I cannot find an answer to.
First, let's face it, Bill C-49 is an omnibus bill because it amends 13 pieces of legislation. If we meet before work resumes in September to answer questions about Bill C-30, we will be late because the deadline is August 1 or July 31. I do not understand why we would meet in September to solve a problem for which we would already be late.
If I were told that we would be meeting for one or two weeks, holding two to four meetings to deal urgently with what needs to be done for grain transportation, it would be one thing. However, I also see that we want to study Bill C-49 in the interval between the dates proposed in the motion and the return to the House for the new session. In that case, I say no.
Before I vote in favour of the motion, I would like to get an idea of how many hours we want to spend on Bill C-49. No less than 13 pieces of legislation are affected. There is no way that we will manage to do it properly in four meetings. That doesn't quite make sense. I wonder where the urgency to work in September comes from if we are already late.
Can we have an idea of the time that we want to spend on Bill C-49, to see if we have time to cover all the topics? I know that the first come, first serve game works, but there is also a motion coming up that proposes that the minister be asked to split the bill so that we can quickly study what is urgent and take the time we need to study the rest of the bill.
If I have to vote on those motions in the order in which they are moved, because I do not have the information I need and the ruling has not been made to ask the minister to divide his bill so that we can deal with what is most urgent and study the rest afterwards, I will unfortunately have to take issue with that. However, that's not because I don't want to work in September.