I'm going to try a different tack, because obviously, my earlier arguments were not sufficient to get Mr. Sorbara on side.
There are well-established precedents of statutory required content that are put into Canadian bills. For example, on the list of reports and returns, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is required under subsection 71(1) of the Broadcasting Act to submit an annual report on the operations of the corporation, and there is detail in that. Subsection 73(3) details the statutory required content of the report. It breaks down on all of these fronts.
If we go to the list of reports and returns, the Law Commission of Canada is required, under section 23 of the Law Commission of Canada Act, to table an annual report on the activities of the commission. It also has broken down, in law, certain provision of information that parliamentarians of the day decided were important for future parliamentarians. Many of us at this table may have read those reports and benefited greatly from the information presented therein. Again, it doesn't matter if it's a Liberal government, a Conservative government, or as my friend to the left here might want, a different type of government. It doesn't matter. I don't think he's a CCFer, but I do hear that the CCF is quite popular these days.
Again, it's quite common practice for parliamentarians to say that they want to establish certain metrics and to have reporting, and that it not be policy, but law.
I have other examples, but I hope that members opposite would reconsider now that they've learned about the Broadcasting Act standards and the Law Commission of Canada Act, and the reporting that is asked by Parliament and is done year after year to ensure proper transparency.
I ask for a recorded vote on that.
(Motion negatived: nays 5; yeas 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])