I'd like to follow in the vein of my colleague who was just speaking. The honourable member is really flagging this basic and perhaps pragmatic question about what it would take to actually meet the requirements of this motion, if it were to pass.
I think it's a point that is worth belabouring, so I would like to elaborate slightly.
I'd like to ask the officials who are with us today to talk about the costs associated with producing extensive documents, as the opposition has proposed.
How much time is it taking officials to gather, review and produce those official documents this year?
How much is it costing Canadian taxpayers to produce those official documents this year?
Is this the best use of public resources, time and energy in the public service?
I don't think so, Mr. Chair.
We return to this issue of wanting to have a robust debate, of wanting to ensure that all members of this committee are satisfied that this topic has been thoroughly explored, but perhaps I could invite our colleagues to elaborate on why it is that this motion will actually advance our goal, our focus, of how to address a problematic business model, a problematic business model that has been, as one of the members I believe said earlier, festering for some time and has its origins in 2011 but hasn't been sufficiently addressed. It hasn't been adequately responded to.
That is the opportunity before us in this committee at this moment. Rather than allowing the committee to actually play that productive role in guiding public policy response, in guiding a government response on this issue, the committee is instead on something of a fishing expedition with this motion. It doesn't achieve the very goals the opposition members have fairly exhaustively outlined in their desire to see tax fraud reduced and to see unqualified, under-regulated and undertrained individuals no longer being able to endanger other road users and Canadians driving on our highways. There are real stakes in this issue, Mr. Chair, stakes that the opposition has been very keen to highlight during our preceding meetings and the proceedings that have come before us today.
Yet, given the opportunity to actually move our work forward and produce concrete recommendations that will address those very challenges, we see instead this continual returning to the well, this dragging out of a process and bringing in of more witnesses, despite the many witness from whom we've already heard. Bringing in more dimensions and more aspects or facets to this issue that might be explored, they are constantly moving the goalpost in terms of the number of meetings that have been requested and the number of witnesses we would hear testimony from.
It produces a context, Mr. Chair, in which I think the committee is impeded from playing a productive role in addressing the issue before us. It's something that doesn't serve the interests of Canadians, and it's inconsistent with what the opposition members themselves have said repeatedly on the seriousness of this issue and the urgency with which they profess to want to see the government respond.
At a certain point, Mr. Chair, I think we do need to ask, which is it for the opposition members? Is this a matter of great urgency that we should move on with speed in order to save lives and improve the safety of our trucking sector and the safety of our roads? Or, in fact, as seemingly is the case, should we continually extend our discussions and the number of meetings, continually expand the number of witnesses and and the scope under discussion ad nauseam, such that we don't actually get to the point of addressing the problem or of offering solutions, or of being constructive in how it is that the trucking sector and the challenges it faces can be improved and these issues can be mitigated?
Mr. Chair, I would once again just return to encouraging our colleagues opposite to consider whether this union of the two opposition parties for their own purposes is the best way for us to move forward, and whether or not blowing up meetings with motions not focused on the core purpose of this study in order to score political points and film clips instead of working on the problem at hand is the best way for us to use our time together.
It would appear that there's an answer to that question, but I would turn to the opposition members to perhaps think about whether or not we might be able to move forward in a better, more constructive way.
I'll hold my comments there for now.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.