I'm quite shocked that this was actually agreed to at the steering committee meeting. We agreed to go forward. We agreed that serious, meaningful citizen engagement on something as important as open government requires a serious, scientific approach, with appropriate analysis and the ability to actually hear what the people of Canada are saying.
The honourable member can set up his own Facebook site whenever he wants to on open government. But we expected that this could be a pilot for the way government operates in 2.0. We need to go forward.
The last meaningful consultation a parliamentary committee did was Senator Kirby's. And then there was the one we did in the disability committee in 2002-03. We have been at an absolute standstill in allowing ordinary Canadians, who don't necessarily know how to ask to be witnesses, to consult and advise government.
I feel extraordinarily strongly that we should go forward. We agreed to it last week. I don't know, honestly, what the member is saying. Let's see what the consultants say.
As the honourable member knows, $250,000 has been set aside at the liaison committee to do expressly these kinds of activities. It's never been tapped, because there is always someone on the other side thinking that less is better and that democracy should be cheap.
We have to spend the money to do this properly.