Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I googled what the mandate of this committee is. We're tasked with studying issues “related to reports of the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, and the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner”. We have the power to ensure that Canadians' personal data is protected.
I see my old friend Glen Motz, whom I've been on committee with in the past. I look forward to hearing what you have to say, Glen, on this particular motion.
We have the power to ensure that Canadians' personal data is protected. Certainly we've talked about this a lot, about this increasingly digital world and the difficulties with protecting that data. We've had conversations within the last two or three weeks on this and the importance of it. We have the opportunity to improve access to information so that our democracy becomes open by default and more transparent. These are some of the issues.
Mr. Chair, I spoke about how this committee has worked quite well for several weeks in a row in getting the important things done that fall within this mandate. When I first got to this committee, we were full of gotcha moments. We were full of gotcha motions. There were several motions put forward at a time. Decisions were made at the last minute, or at least revealed at the last minute, for which motion we would be talking about and which clips members of the opposition might get for their social media pages. As I said before, I'm not super-hyperpartisan, but I do find some of that political gamesmanship annoying.
Indeed, it can be harmful, as we saw earlier here in conversations. I spoke earlier about Standing Order 18 and decorum in committee. It's disappointing and it's harmful when we see stuff like that happen at committee.
I'm still not convinced that this motion is necessary. I'm not convinced of that, based on the number of things I'm hearing back home about this, which is basically zero. What the people back home do care about and what Canadians, I think, across the country care about is that their representatives, regardless of their party affiliation, are working to make their lives better and to understand the issues that Canadians are focusing on and to find ways to work together to make those things better.
Inflation was very high. It's come back down to the Bank of Canada rate, which is very good news. I'd like to say that it took a lot of the work of parliamentarians, but I would say that there are some parliamentarians out there who would probably like to see inflation go back up. I think they look at that as a political opportunity for themselves. Again, that's harmful. That's hurtful. It's extremely depressing that we would look for negative things to happen in our country so that those things might make us look a little bit better politically.
Again, I see that as hugely disappointing. I would like to think that we'd all be pulling in the same direction and let the differences in policy shine through. In a true democracy, you would then have Canadians getting a chance to make a decision, an informed decision, on different policies. I guess I could even include different ideologies. There are people who think centre. There are people who think left. There are people who think right. It doesn't bode well for them to just hear us beating each other over the head with negative comments, insults and derogatory remarks.
Again, it goes back to the 30-second clip that you see on Twitter or that you see on social media. That's become the norm of the day in politics. I saw it happen in other countries before it happened here.
We've had studies on social media and the effects that social media can have. It's great that you can now reach Canadians immediately, but is it great that you can reach them with some of the hateful, hurtful things that happen in the House of Commons and at committees these days? I don't think that seeing that kind of poor decorum, day in and day out, is something Canadians in my province and in my riding—or in Mr. Motz's riding, for that matter—feel is good for democracy and good for the state of Canada.
Again, to go back to Ms. Khalid, she takes the brunt of an inordinate amount of that negative decorum that we see, particularly in this committee, but we also had Ms. Damoff here for a little while filling in for another member, and Ms. Damoff has chosen not to run next time because of the hateful comments, and not just those made to her but those made to other people. It puts us in a position where we start to wonder whether this negative power that we see day in and day out is something we want to deal with.
I'm not, at this very moment, ready to make an amendment to this motion as amended. I'm still waiting to hear debate from the other side as to why this is so important, topical and on the minds of Canadians, even though, technically speaking, it's not within the mandate, unless we agree to send it to the Ethics Commissioner and have the Ethics Commissioner come back to us with his thoughts on this particular issue.
Again, I see that a member of the opposition is going to speak on this, so please add my name back to the list, Mr. Chair, after we hear from Mr. Caputo, I believe.