Mr. Speaker, there are 40 witnesses that have been heard from, or thereabouts, and there are another 90 or so. What I would like to point out is yes, there are a lot of witnesses to be heard, but remember, we have heard one-third of them.
The witnesses were not chosen on a partisan basis. The witnesses were chosen by an expert company that we hired to assist us in developing the testimony and bringing it forward in an orderly process. We have spent no doubt thousands of dollars in terms of that process and that will now all be lost. Whether it is tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just with respect to the experts from KPMG, I do not know. I believe it was money well spent in an attempt to proceed in a non-partisan fashion. Obviously that now will be lost if the committee is shut down.
We note that the committee will not be sitting next week. There is no reason that it could not continue to sit next week, but the Liberals have specifically decided to shut it down. Hearing more witnesses next week would not be throwing good money after bad. In fact it would ensure that the hard-earned money that we have already put into it would be used to bring forward the necessary conclusions that Parliament needs in order not only to determine what happened but to ensure that it does not happen again.