Thank you.
I think this is the fundamental issue of how we do our business in Parliament and as a parliamentary committee. We can't leave the 21st century behind. We can't say that the tools of the 20th century, as interesting and exciting as they might have been at the time, are sufficient for doing our work today. We need to do something more than broadcast on television some of these committee meetings. We need to do more than invite experts to testify before us. We need to do more than travel to a select, small group of communities across the country--as committees usually do--to make those kinds of decisions.
Especially when we're dealing with the topic of open government and how Canadians interact with their government and use its services and resources, I think it's absolutely crucial that we go down this road. It is a major failing of our Parliament that we don't have the capacity inside our institution now to do this as a matter of course, and that we have to go to an outside consultant to put together this kind of program.
This capacity should exist inside Parliament. Until parliamentary committees make these kinds of requests of the people who are the decision-makers--the Liaison Committee and others--we're not going to move this issue.
It's absolutely crucial on two levels: it's crucial to the work we're doing on open government, and it's crucial to how we function as members of Parliament doing work on behalf of Canadians. That's why I strongly support this proposal.