Mr. Chair, we have an opportunity to rebuild the reputation of this committee, and I'm hoping we will put our heads together and undertake that effort in the days ahead.
There is the political question and there is the mandate question. On the mandate, the committee's mandate is very narrow, as you have correctly pointed out. As such it is incapable of conducting any kind of serious study, if that indeed was the intention in the first place of the motion that was heard before the election.
The second question is a political one. What we learned in the last election is that all the accusations around this subject were heard: they were aired; they were printed on the front pages of newspapers and aired on national television; they played on radio stations. On election day we found out that, with all this knowledge in mind, voters just didn't care. So we have to ask ourselves whether we want to be seen by the public as engaging in a political scrap over an issue that doesn't matter to people, in the way we did last time. By the way, the method of the committee was condemned by a whole series of observers, including even The Globe and Mail editorial page, which I think you will all agree is not particularly friendly to our government.
There were a lot of observers who were very much unimpressed with the way the hearings happened last time. So I would encourage the committee to stay focused on some good policy work that will actually improve the country as opposed to fixating on something that really has nothing to do with our mandate, number one. Number two, if the object is political, it probably will not achieve its political objectives because, as I mentioned earlier, the opposition parties had this so-called ammunition in the last election and it bore exactly no fruit.
Thank you.