Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I believe what I've heard here, then, is that hopefully Mr. Allen would be willing to accept a friendly amendment to leave the quorum at three, yet change the motion from the last Parliament, so that at least one government member and one opposition member are present during a reduced quorum.
I want to make the point that I really do appreciate the sense of cooperation from our colleagues across the way, because it is quite important. I know from the trips we've gone on that it was very important.
For example, Mr. Blais, when we went to Gaspé for hearings, on the last day of a five-day trip it was very hard to keep the whole semblance of the committee together, but we were able to hear very important testimony from your constituents.
I think it's very nice to have members, because we are allowed to cross-examine, or at least examine, the witnesses and ask some questions, even in a reduced quorum. It's vitally important that at least questions be presented from both the government party side and the opposition side so that a full and balanced approach can be taken.
I do appreciate the fact that sometimes it's unfortunate that we would only have three members. It would be nice to have four or five members, or a full committee, but in the interest of protecting the use of taxpayers' dollars, we'd better make use of three committee members when we have to, to make sure that we don't have a witness come all this way or that we travel to some remote part of the country, which we often do as a fisheries committee, and not be able to accept testimony simply because we have a rule that doesn't seem to make sense at that particular point in time.
So I was hoping that would be accepted as a friendly amendment and we could move on and go to the question.