I think quite a few things have been covered by my honourable colleague Leslie Church.
I think the purpose of this committee is to provide a framework for ethics and access to information. On October 1, a request was made to require a certain amount of transparency from a specific person or public figure—namely, the Prime Minister. We got the information, which demonstrates our Prime Minister's transparency. Also—as MP Leslie Church put it so well—our Prime Minister is diversifying our economic capacity quite a lot. He is meeting with public figures to increase our investments in various sectors or in other countries.
Instead of recognizing the Prime Minister's exceptional work and efforts, he's now being asked to report on his meetings and show much greater transparency. Is it the role or the objective of this committee to ask people to tell us whether they had a coffee with such and such a person, to ask them if they took notes and to ask them to provide those notes? Is that really what we want to do?
I think that in doing so, we're wasting our time. What we want is not just to frame the current situation. We want to frame the situation on an ongoing basis in the short, medium and long term, so the work of members is as regulated as possible and so we don't get bogged down in discussions like the one we're having today.
I'm perfectly willing to stay here until midnight. I have no issue with that, as long as it's to discuss how we, as members of Parliament, can be better governed in terms of ethics and access to information.
When this kind of request is made at 6:30 p.m., what exactly does it show? Is that how we're going to function during this mandate? I don't think it will really be efficient and effective. It doesn't do anything for the taxpayers who are listening to us right now, and I think that's really unfortunate.
In closing, I would like to congratulate the Prime Minister once again on the work he has done. I congratulate him on the meetings he attended, because that answers all the questions asked during question period today. I congratulate him because he is working hard to ensure that we have a strong economy and a strong Canada.
There you have it, Mr. Chair. I'll stop there.