Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When I was appointed to the scrutiny and regulations committee, I was told it was sort of a non-wanted committee. Now I realize that we're going to interpret the Accountability Act, so I feel good about that.
I feel that we have a problem here when everything is put into dichotomies. If we don't push this bill through--websites say so--we're bad. If we spend 45 hours on witnesses, but in 35 of those hours we as politicians espouse our political bandwagon of the week, that's not really a thorough review of the project.
Finally, if the lobbyists are former Liberal staffers, they're bad and they shouldn't be allowed. But if they're former Conservative opposition staffers, then they're okay. So I want to get away from that dichotomy of good and bad, red and blue—I'll never be blue in the face, Mr. Poilievre, probably red—and hit on a central point, a very positive point, as a road map forward that Ms. Flis brought up, and that is the idea of conflict of interest as determined by other societies. I'll throw it to you because I think you have a duty, as Mr. Martin was really saying, to do some self-policing at a higher gear.
Governments across this country are in partnership with law societies, dental societies, psychologist societies, and so on, and they police their own. But it's a partnership, because the government gives you a private bill and says, go police thyself. It doesn't work perfectly, but lawyers get disbarred and get criminal charges brought against them, etc.
I think this may be a way to go. As you may know, with conflicts of interest in psychology and law societies across this country, if you have knowledge of a client's business and then go to work for the other client, that's a no-no. It's very similar here.