Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think that we can accomplish what Madame Vignola is talking about with a couple of simple amendments to the motion you read out. Again, I would beg the indulgence of the clerk and the analysts to capture what I'm going to try to say.
We could simply list among the witnesses consumer advocates or affected passengers, however it is we want to indicate that we want to expand this to include passenger rights advocates or passengers themselves. Perhaps we could add them to that long list of people we want to invite to testify.
I think we should also invite CN Rail, which had a role to play in the VIA Rail issue. I believe there are some track management concerns. I would request that.
Rather than getting into how the meetings would be structured or how many we'd have, we could say in the third paragraph, “the chair be empowered to coordinate the resources and scheduling necessary to hold special meetings beginning on Thursday, January 12”. We could then work behind the scenes, with the chair and with each other, to determine how many meetings we would like, how those should be structured, etc.
I agree with Madame Vignola on both cases that we should hear from passenger rights advocates and that we should consider the possibility that we will not be able to conduct all of the business that we wish to in a single meeting on a single day. This allows for that possibility, but it allows more flexibility for the chair, in consultation with members, to move forward.
Those would be my friendly amendments. The first is to expand the witness list by two. Namely, they are CN Rail and passenger rights advocates—if we want to call them that—or passengers themselves. I'm not sure how we would structure that. The second is “beginning on January 12”, which would allow us more flexibility.