Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The conversation has been going in all directions. I would ask Mr. Stoffer why he's not married to his amendment, because at the end of the day, if we're going to do this, you cannot do this right without having a full discussion with the Department of National Defence about its policies. We have to be able to recommend changes, not only to the policies of the Department of Veterans Affairs but to the policies of the Department of National Defence, if we're going to do this properly. I don't understand why we would take on such a large and important task as this, and at the same time tie our hands as to what we can do and recommend for changes.
As you said, under Standing Order 108(1), if we do include DND, it's outside the purview of our committee unless we recommend a joint subcommittee of the Department of National Defence and the Department of Veterans Affairs, in which case, as with listeriosis, we'd be taking extra meetings: it doesn't have to be the whole committee; it could be designated members of the committee. I agree with Mr. Mayes; it's something that would have to be kept reasonably quiet. You're going to have a lot of witnesses coming forward who would expect confidentiality. If we were going to do it, in my mind, we would have to do it properly with both DND and Veterans Affairs and we would have to undertake all the details today and make sure we draft our motions properly in the first place. We should also recognize that this is a huge undertaking, and if we were to draft a joint subcommittee of the two committees, it would require a lot of extra time in the next sitting of Parliament.