Yes, I do agree, however—
I would add one additional thing on this appointment process that maybe the committee could consider. I think Mr. Harper had promised, consistent with the proposals made by a number of parties, when he first became Prime Minister to have a very different appointment process. There would be hearings and so on, and he hasn't proceeded with that.
One idea.... The first board of the centre came recommended to Mr. Clark and Mr. Mulroney by Mr. Gordon Fairweather, who had been the chief human rights commissioner of Canada. So Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Clark, to their credit, went to Mr. Fairweather—who'd been appointed by Pierre Trudeau, by the way, as human rights commissioner--and they had him prepare, in consultation, a list for the first board.
I can tell you that before I accepted the offer from Mr. Mulroney, one of the first things I did was to look at the proposed list of the board, you can be sure. There was a good cross-section of Canadians, representing as part of their past all the political parties. Most of the people on the board did not have political connections, but some did. There was a great range. They all had a common interest in human rights.
The process was impeccable: you had a human rights commissioner giving a proposed list to a government, and the government was prepared to act on that. Maybe something like that could be tried in the interim, to come back to the need for some immediate action at the centre.