Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Mr. Chairman, I'm sorry. Could I respond to that? That was the kind of response that was given in the early days of environmentalists. It was an uphill struggle to bring awareness to the fact that the unseen impact of various activities is real. I'm not an environmentalist, and I'm not here to preach environmental causes, but I have what I call my paint-can theory of the environment.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  The year the member was not sitting, I'm told, was 2006.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  It's in the Canada Elections Act.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  No. We actually did some research on that. We found that it's been there since the 1920s. What's proposed in Bill C-2 is along the same lines.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I don't know the answer to that.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I'm told that it was one member.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Well, these things aren't necessarily made public, I suppose.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  They're all substantive, I might say, but some of them might be consequential to other--

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Mr. Chairman, as the lawyer for the House of Commons, members of Parliament, and committees, naturally my view would be in favour of the interests of that institution. The short answer to the member's question is that I don't think you should play around with your privileges, and you should sustain them.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I believe, Mr. Chairman, that my office can have available to any member who asks for them amendments reflecting the concerns raised in this report and have them available for the member tomorrow. I haven't counted how many there would be. It could be 40, the deputy law clerk tells me.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Well, it's more than that. There are procedural rules about how you draft bills, so I can't draft as I would like to, cutting from whole cloth. You have to draft based on the bill you have in front of you, so you have to go where the procedural rules allow you to go. That doesn't always have us going to our preferred spot.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  But not all. Section 49 is a problem.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I think you have to make a constitutional amendment, and that's not something you can do overnight, relative to the timelines of this bill. I think the only solution is to remove the provision pertaining to secret ballots.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Correct. In the broad sense, they're not judicial and they're not legislative. So they're in the executive branch. But that doesn't mean they don't enjoy the independence that may be sufficient to the satisfaction of members of Parliament and that there's no wrongful interference by the government.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Mr. Martin, if you didn't build a house right and there was an ability to take you to court and have you demonstrate that you built a house wrong, I don't think as a carpenter you would like that. I'm not sure if you are a carpenter, Mr. Martin, but if you're a builder and you don't build right, and you can be taken to court to demonstrate how you did build right, you'd lose a lot of money spending time in court and not building.