Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's good to be here with you all today.
As you'll recall, we were in the middle of a discussion about giving the board the power to make appointments in a case in which the minister has failed to make an appointment in a timely manner. The discussion was whether six months was enough time, or if that amount should be extended to another period, such as 12 months.
Obviously, I can't make that amendment to my own amendment, but certainly the principle that I want to see included here is to compel the minister to make appointments in a timely way and to have a consequence, which still allows the boards to operate but to do so by making appointments. This would only be for those particular appointments that fall to the minister's authority, not for municipal appointments or other levels of government appointments. It specifically addresses just those that the minister makes.
If the ball is entirely in the minister's court and he or she fails to make that appointment in a timely fashion, I think it's good to have this backstop so that boards don't go with vacancies, which we've seen far too often in the last eight years.
If anyone else would be willing to amend that to be a 12-month period, I would be very amenable to that.