Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I'm glad my friend Mr. Barrett takes such notice of my words. All I said was that my preference would be to eventually have a Canadian head of state. It's not that I think we can amend the Constitution now, or that it should be a priority, but I would rather have a Canadian head of state one day. It's just my view.
When it comes to attacking the institutions of the monarchy and the Governor General, this reduction in budget with no real explanation is to me a very insensitive way of treating the current Governor General, because essentially it's an attack on her. It's an attack on her spending. It's an attack on how she has been doing things.
Again, I believe this committee is able to have a proper report that doesn't arbitrarily take away funds when we don't understand why. I was a mayor and a councillor for many years. We would never look at a budget and not have any idea of the line breakdown of a budget or have a member show up at the last minute at a meeting and ask for monies to be taken away without having socialized it with other council members. We've done no study of the Governor General's budget specifically. I don't recall one question being asked about this amount—today even— and I just don't think it's the right way to go about it. We should finish our report properly.
I'm perfectly prepared to say again in the report that the Governor General shouldn't have a clothing allowance and that the salary of the Governor General should generally cover clothing. I believe we should make recommendations related to all travel of the Governor General and go through all of the things and the points we set out in our study and properly line them up in a report, which, again, we never seem to get to, because different members bring up motions constantly to have new studies about everything, and we never finish anything.
In the end, Mr. Chair, again, I don't think this is the right way to go about this type of motion, in my personal view.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.