Thanks, Chair.
This motion offers us an important opportunity to review an act that is foundational to the public's ability to have confidence in elected officials, particularly those subject to the act—designated public office holders, ministers and the Prime Minister. This act, in relative terms, isn't very old. It's less than 20 years old. It was reviewed most recently in 2014. Though a review isn't required, things change, and we learn as we go.
It's been well observed over my time on this committee and as a parliamentarian—and pollsters, journalists and columnists will often remind us—that Canadians' confidence in public institutions is low. I think we should look for opportunities to give Canadians reason to have confidence in their institutions and those who are the stewards of those institutions. In our case, we're talking about the government. We have the opportunity to do that.
This motion will allow us concurrently to have the matter sent to the House to be reported and, while we're waiting for it to be dispensed with, to continue our work so that we can really seize the day.
I don't want to belabour it. I think it's quite self-explanatory. I think that this is very timely. You don't want to wait until the eve of an election to start a study. We're at the start of a new Parliament. Now is the time. We haven't been sent any legislation from the House. From what the government has signalled, it doesn't look like this fall we're going to see legislation referred to our committee. This act is quite squarely within the purview of our committee. It relates to the things that we've discussed.
We had interesting conversations with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. I think this will build on the conversations we had the other day. Also, as I said, the real bottom line here is that we're presented with an opportunity to demonstrate our stewardship of Canadians' confidence in this institution by reviewing this act and making recommendations for changes where the evidence points us to do so.
Thank you.