Thank you, Chair.
I want to thank Mr. Barsalou-Duval for his comments. I think we're seeing a little movement on the timeline, but before I come back to the timeline and maybe a vote, I want to raise something in the motion that Monsieur Barsalou-Duval would perhaps be concerned about. It is the requirement to have the documents produced in two official languages.
This committee and the opposition parties have placed a lot of emphasis on ensuring that all parts of the federal government respect the official languages obligations. In fact, just last week, the Conservative Party raised this issue during question period. Last Thursday, the Conservative member for Richmond—Arthabaska raised a complaint about committee documents being in English only. This is directly tied to the 20 days, 30 days, 45 days and 60 days.
Our government agrees that we should absolutely be respecting our official languages obligations. There has been some confusion during this debate, I think, about how this motion could possibly respect those obligations. There has been a suggestion that the CIB could be allowed to provide the documents in English only, and then the committee staff would translate them.
Colleagues, given the breadth of this sprawling motion, we're talking about hundreds—in fact, probably thousands—of pages of documents. It would be extremely unfair and patently unreasonable to place the burden on our committee staff to provide the translation. It should be the CIB's responsibility to respond to the committee's request to have the documents in both official languages, and our responsibility as a committee is to give them enough time in that request.
I will again remind us of the Conservative Party's comments last week, specifically about the fact that committees must provide documents in both official languages, not in English only, as has happened on several occasions. There might be an amendment out there to make sure that the documents come in both official languages. However, the need to have them in both official languages is tied to the timeline as well, so I would like to come back to the point of the timeline.
The government is willing to try perhaps 40 days. We might find some traction on this. I hope you get the message that we are trying to find a path forward, as I said, that is fair to the people who support us on this committee so professionally and who work so hard, that is fair to the CIB officials and that is respectful of fair and reasonable process.
I'm happy to move to a vote on the motion. Should it fail, I'll immediately try again with an amendment of 40 days.