I think you need a rebellion in the caucus to do that, though I can offer some moderately serious things.
I don't think there should be the number of associate members of committees that there are. Now this is one of the best committees in Parliament, and most of you come to most of the meetings, but I believe I'm correct in saying that the NDP has something like three associate members on this committee, the Bloc has very few, the Liberals have very few, and the Conservatives have more than 120. Every member of the caucus who isn't a member of the committee or who isn't a cabinet minister, including the parliamentary secretaries, is an associate member of a committee.
I think the rules of the House of Commons should be looked at to the point that you can feel reasonably confident, if you're on a committee, that the whip isn't going to take you off if he doesn't like you or you don't do what you're told; that you're here for the full time, maybe even for a full Parliament; and that as associates you'd just have a limited number, not every member of the caucus. I have wanted to see that for a long time.
One of the real problems I find, in looking at committees and what they do—even if it's a committee that I go before, say, three times in a year—is that there are always new members. The thing you want to have in an effective committee is a corporate sense that you're not there for your party, but you're there for the people of Canada and the constituents and to work with your colleagues to produce the best thing you can for Canada, regardless of your party's views. Tell your party leaders to keep out of it.
That's an ideal. They've done it in England in their smaller committees, and they have an amazing history of it. But it's a totally different world. The average stay in Parliament for a member in Canada is a little over seven years, from seven to ten years. The average stay in Britain in almost triple that. I don't know about South Africa. But we do have that very real problem of the resources and the pressures on human resources and the pressures on MPs that tend to reduce the ability to produce a cohesive committee, except in very select circumstances.