It's very much the inspiration for the proposal. I have studied that committee and written a paper about it.
It took some time to develop that constructive culture inside the committee. The issues were not headline generating issues; they were little detailed laws, but they had a real impact on people's lives. They could either enable you or restrict the behaviour of either individuals or companies. It was important work, but it wasn't the work that would generate a lot of publicity.
It did have a dedicated lawyer supporting the committee and happened to have Senator Eugene Forsey in its early days as one of the really dedicated senators on it, who had an encyclopedic mind about everything parliamentary and a precise way of defining the issues.
This large joint committee that I'm suggesting would take time to develop an internal culture within it. I have read all the proceedings of your committee, the one I'm testifying before. I applaud the members for working constructively together, trying to find the best.... You've heard some good witnesses. I've learned from reading your proceedings and I can't say that's true of all the committee proceedings I read. I read a lot of them. This committee is doing good work and I hope you can produce a report based on an all-party consensus as much as possible. That would add weight to the report, and we may get some movement after having none in 1998 and none in 2003.
The point about the Senate is that it would be a minority presence on this committee. Once, early in my academic career, I proposed a large expenditure review committee made up of 45 members of the House of Commons, and I found it hard to think of how you would identify 45 MPs who would want to spend a bulk of their committee time on that committee. It's just hard. This is a minority activity within Parliament. Not many MPs really want to spend a lot of their time working on a committee that tries to understand the mysteries of government finance.