What we're doing at this stage is setting the routine motions that will govern the committee business. This is the proposal to establish a subcommittee on agenda and procedure. If you didn't have this motion, then it would be the committee that does this as a committee of the whole in the absence of anything else.
I'm going to speak to why I think a subcommittee on agenda and procedure is a good tool for a committee like this. As Mr. Chair already pointed out, you don't have to use it but it's there for you if it's adopted in routine motions.
I sat on the trade committee for the last three years, which did not have a subcommittee on agenda and procedure. It was not a happy experience.
When that happens, a couple of things occur. First, there is no ability to meet in advance of the meeting, work things out, and discuss them as part of a more informal procedure—and by the way, every decision that's taken at a subcommittee has to come back before the committee anyway, where it would be ratified, so the decisions have to be taken here. By having a subcommittee, it allows a smaller committee to meet and do a little bit of that legwork in advance of the committee.
Second, the practice of the previous government in committees was to go in camera for anything to do with committee business. Anytime you wanted to discuss a potential item of business, the government went in camera and everything was secret and off the record. That's how committee business was dealt with. I hope that's not the practice of this government or of this committee, but by having a subcommittee, you can talk about the committee business and then come before this committee and have an open public discussion about whether the committee wants to adopt the recommendations of that subcommittee.
I think it's very helpful to have a subcommittee. Again, it's up to the chair and the committee itself when to use it, but if you don't have it in your routine motions then you don't have the subcommittee. I think that's a lamentable absence.