Mr. Chair, in responding to Mr. McGuinty's very good question, I want to say that although I'm not a political person I tend to be conservative in my views about how government works--small “c” conservative.
So I must say that in reading the bill--and I'm conscious that the author of the bill is a former minister--I was not keen on seeing a bill that would legislate a cabinet committee, to tell you the truth. Although I can certainly understand the intent of the bill and of course the importance of the issues, and I certainly agree with what Mr. McGuinty has just said about how the SDSs do not seem to be grounded in real authority--there seems to be a lack of a central authority there--I would not favour legislating that allocation of responsibility and that mechanism within the cabinet system to do that. I think that simply ties the hands of a Prime Minister too much, whoever that Prime Minister may be, on how to organize his or her government and how to have decisions taken on these very important matters.
So the short answer to your question, Mr. McGuinty, is that I didn't favour that. I didn't think that was the most effective way of grounding the SDSs in real authority.