There's a lot of smoke and fire and a lot of barking going on.
I really don't want to criticize one of my colleagues, but if one member had actually defended Conrad Black, I suspect Conrad Black might be serving a life sentence rather than a five-year sentence, given his track record of success at defending his issues and so on.
It is unfortunate. I look at the clerk and the analyst here. They're good people. They come here every day wanting to do good work. But I can see they are frustrated. The motions are constantly being changed. The agenda is being changed. Reports aren't being made. It's a chaotic situation. There are certain people who want to turn this into a Star Chamber exercise and affix blame and attack people and carry on in that manner. Progress is not being made, and it has been rightfully pointed out that we are not improving the system and services for the public, but we are spending a lot of taxpayers' dollars. Somebody said they are a taxpayer too, but we have to remember it is taxpayers who pay our salary. If we're giving any money back to the system, it originally came from taxpayers.
I did hear one member say that there is a lack of transparency, there's a lack of this and that, and we need more time to go at these things. But my goodness, I understand that when one of these people was before the committee, that very member had seven or eight minutes to examine the key witness she now wants to bring back and she only used up four minutes of her time. If it's that crucial and important, do your homework, be prepared when you bring these motions forward, and use your time. Obviously there must be a fair bit of transparency if a member had seven or eight minutes to examine a witness and only used four minutes of it and let the rest of her time slide off. Now they're calling to bring the person back. I guess they didn't have enough time the first time around.
These are some of the concerns we have here.
Again, I would encourage the members on both sides to take some cues from the public accounts committee. Let's look at making this committee an actual constructive committee that gets on with improving the system.
We file lots of reports out of the public accounts committee, Madam Chair, and they usually have unanimous support of the committee when they're filed in the House. Very rarely do we have one with a minority report.
It's unfortunate, looking at what's going on in this committee, that we're off on a whole bunch of tangents and Star Chamber hearings and investigations and hunting trips for certain members. There are some members on the opposition parties I would love to go on a fishing trip with, Madam Chair, but I wouldn't put them in charge of the fishing trip because I think we'd find an awful lot of dry holes.
Those are my comments for the brief period of time I've been before this committee.