Great.
If we don't follow the rules and regulations, it's anarchy. We're going to end up with an even more partisan situation, as I've said.
Since we seem to have been able to find some equality, even in ruling bills non-votable, from a partisan point of view, from a party point of view, I think we've kind of struck a balance. We need to look at it from that point.
Perhaps I will move on to the other point, and that's the role of this committee in this action. I need to speak to this committee as a whole.
We do things from time to time, and we certainly do have pieces of business here, that may have a partisan edge to them, but we establish working groups within this committee. I know that this committee has other subcommittees besides the committee on private members' business. It has a subcommittee that's currently looking at ethics and the forms that we all need to fill out. It has a subcommittee that even looks at the steering of this committee, what items will and will not come up next. I know that for a while we even had a subcommittee on security.
So we've had many subcommittees before, and at all times there were members from all parties sitting on these subcommittees. It's how we get the work done. It's how we divide the work among this group of very busy people. We take it down to four or five people representing all of the parties on this committee. The subcommittee is charged with being able to move forward and get that work done.
In this case, the work is private members' business, but as I say, in other cases, it's other work. Whether in fact it's just the steering of this committee or private members' business or in fact ethics, those people have been charged by the people at this table to go ahead and go forward and discover, to go ahead and go forward and determine, to go ahead and go forward and rewrite, to go ahead and look at the areas they've been charged to look at.
Those people have been charged, not by the four people who are sitting at the subcommittee, not by the four people and the chair who are sitting at the subcommittee, but by this committee as a whole.
I challenge this committee as a whole. You have given us the ability to move off. We move off as four or five. We follow a criterion. We take great advice from clerks and from researchers as we do this. But we represent this whole committee. We represent this committee as a whole. We represent each and every member, and I could name you all but I will not. We represent you all when we sit at subcommittee.
When we come back with a report from subcommittee, there's some thought process by which this committee would say, “We charged them with their duty. They went off and diligently did it. We should accept what they say; that's what we've asked them for.” When a group of us, a smaller group — and I don't mean that in size, I mean in number — moves off and looks at a piece of information — I dare say that at some point the other subcommittees will report back, whether it be on ethics or other points. In this case, the subcommittee on private members' business has reported back—