Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for hearing me. I think I'd rather be asking the questions than be the witness, but we'll go ahead with the process here.
As chair of the liaison committee, I've been requested to have a look at how we travel within the national capital region and how we receive authorization from the House. We understand that certainly when it comes to whips, we don't want to change any of the approvals. Our whips still need to make that happen. This is more of a procedural request that we're looking for today. We want to seek your advice, and possibly get an agreement from the whips. That would help us as we manage our committee activities.
I think it's important to distinguish that the liaison committee approves funds—some of you may know or be aware of that—whereas the House is the one that actually authorizes the travel and empowers the committee to be able to do that. There is certainly a consensus among members of the liaison committee that having to get authorization from the House to travel within the national capital region is sometimes a bit more cumbersome than it needs to be. I would say that certainly some of the things we're talking about in the national capital region are site visits, conferences that are close by. Sometimes, for some of that travel, we're given little notice and not much time to plan. Getting House authorization sometimes takes too much time and ties up the House.
So one of the things we're proposing today is that when the committee is going to travel in the national capital region, they'll still need to request permission from the liaison committee in terms of funds; that still needs to happen. But what we'd like to suggest is that anyone who is going to do site visits or travel within the national capital region just be able to talk to the whips—all approvals still need to happen from the whips—and cut out the procedural step of trying to get the House approval.
So once again, I think when we are in Ottawa, the request is not for holding witnesses or hearing witnesses. It is not a question of hearing testimony. We're not talking about that. That would still require all the same types of requirements. What we're suggesting is that if there are site visits or conferences that are within the national capital region, the whips must still approve the process, but we'd be able to cut out the process of having that motion appear before the House.
The liaison committee will still approve the funds; the whips will still approve the travel. The process we're asking to cut out would be the one where you would actually have to put a motion before the House, because that is what is suggested right now.
The liaison committee will approve the funds. The clerk of the committee would then be required to get all the signatures from all the whips to make it happen. This would avoid tying up some of the time in the House, but also it would not need to be brought to the House and floor.
I would also suggest that, as I mentioned before, if any expenditures still need to be approved, they will still be done in the manner that we've set out.
That's the proposal we have. I have a dozen or so examples of trips that have been in the national capital region, whether it's been to the Congress Centre, RCMP site visits, any of these kinds of things. Once again, we're just trying to look at how we could possibly streamline the process a bit more at the liaison committee.
That's really all I have to say, and I'd certainly be open for questions right now.