Thank you.
I might as well admit that I am a BlackBerry-carrying member, so I can put that disclaimer out.
I'm not going to belabour the point, but I agree with all of this—that's my personal opinion—in regard to what you can do directly. What you do directly, you can't do indirectly. I don't know how the committee is going to wade into that, but I'm more looking at what Mr. Guimond brought up before, the sanctions.
So before you expel us or prevent us from using a BlackBerry, I would like to perhaps warn you that we are very addicted to them. I don't know how you would implement a sanction. You're going to be punishing the innocent, because probably 99.9% of us are good parliamentarians and won't disclose that another member is not in the House, but I'm sure you're going to want to sanction the members who are continuously or chronically avoiding or circumventing the rules.
If we are going to look at perhaps limiting access to these electronic devices, as you were saying, Ms. O'Brien...I'm a regular member of the finance committee and we get screamed at regularly for looking at our BlackBerrys. When the witness screams at us, we all put our BlackBerrys down, and when the next witness speaks, we all pick them up again. So it is a huge problem, but it is one that I think has to be looked at not only in the House but in all committees and at all functions. But we need them.