Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Professor Miller.
Given the suggestions you made following what's taken place in New Zealand, I would have to say that it might be of interest to have the Governor General, prior to any specific use or exercise of his or her authority and powers, whether they be regular or reserve, to in some way make public the kind of process behind that kind of exercise, but not once an actual decision--an exercise of authority--has been taken by the Governor General, so not to then publicly justify any particular decision. I actually agree with you on that. It may be because of my legal training.
Should we, as a House of Commons, attempt to change the convention, to change our constitutional framework in order to require a Governor General to have to justify specific decisions that have been taken, I do think that then we're on the road to eroding our actual parliamentary democracy and our democratic institutions that uphold that democracy. I am in full agreement with transparency, but I do think there are occasions when that's a dangerous road, and it's not one that I personally would want to take.
However, I do believe that in the interests of transparency that it is a good idea that the Governor General may wish to expound a bit on the process that leads him or her to a decision, in the way that Adrienne Clarkson did once she was no longer Governor General. But I think it should be done while they are a sitting Governor General, because that can then inform the public and shed more light. It's not some scary thing like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain pulling all of the levers without anybody knowing. This way, we would know what the levers were. We may not know the sequence in which they were pulled, but we would know what the levers are, so we that gives us a good sense of arriving at our own idea of what the justification is.
However, on the issue of the motion--