Mr. Chairman, before we have to pass the budget, we have probably four or five weeks. I think the committee's intention, after passing this recommendation, was that we would hope to stand down the budget of Health as a matter of fact, to allow the Minister some time to prepare his response to this recommendation and to come back to the committee and present his case on why the budget should come forward in the House before March 31.
I think the committee is willing to listen to reasonable arguments, and I think the Minister has made a good start today towards providing us some of the answers in his detailed presentation. He may have started to address the answers that we were looking for. But, I think that as things stand right now, it is difficult for the Standing Committee on Finance to agree that we should proceed to the budget and recommend to other Members of this House that it be approved.
I would suggest to the Minister that there would be a much better chance that the Standing Committee on Finance would recommend approval of the budget if he were to spend some time determining how he could respond to this recommendation, and come back to the standing committee with that response and allow us some time to interact. The problem we have, of course, is I suspect that some of the response is included in a document that was only handed out to Members of the Standing Committee on Finance this afternoon, which doesn't give us enough time to review it. So, obviously, the Standing Committee on Finance is going to need some time to review the further information which has been, I suspect, presented to us as a result of the Minister reading this recommendation prior to its being presented in the House.
Mr. Chairman, what I'm saying is that I still feel we should proceed with this recommendation. I don't think we're saying that we have a razor blade held to the Minister's or the department's throat at this point in time. I think it's gotten to the point where this committee has been very frustrated with the response we've received from this department and we are trying to make it very clear how important we think it is that the recommendations that have been presented by our committees and other committees in this Legislature be taken seriously and responded to. We haven't seen that sort of seriousness or that acceptance of their importance in the past.
So, we thought it was time we stood up and took a stand. That is what we're doing with this recommendation. We're saying it's time for things to stop. We want to know, in some detail, just exactly where the department intends to go with these recommendations. I don't think we're saying that we won't listen to reasonable arguments, but I don't think we've had a chance to have those yet. So, Mr. Chairman, I still support the need for this motion and would hope that we could proceed with it, followed by a standing down of the department and having the department come back to the Standing Committee on Finance during this session before the end of March. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.