I do apologize. As somebody who has a name like mine, I understand what it's like t have it butchered, and I do apologize, sir.
Regarding Tom's suggestion, that here was this huge problem, the fact remains that we could easily put together language that talks about certain circumstances, saying that in those circumstances, with a unanimous consent, the committee agrees that the rules are that you could go in camera on that.
I mean, come along. There are very few pieces of legislation that don't have some proviso somewhere that somebody has residual authority or there's a means to deal with circumstances that aren't dealt with in the prescribed legislation.
I've been a cabinet minister, and I'm sure there are others in the room who have too. Quite frankly, you do the best you can with the legislation, then you narrow it down further with your regulations, but you're never going to capture everything. When you identify an issue, as Tom has done, then what you do is you build in a mechanism whereby reasonable people can deal with it. Will it always cover everything one hundred per cent? No, but no legislation does. The best legislation goes as far as it can, and then leaves the flexibility of the members to make common sense decisions, which remarkably, over the decades I've been in public life, are actually easier to find than you might think when people put down the partisanship. If you set that aside, it's amazing how quickly we can come to a meeting of the minds on issues that don't need to be particularly partisan.
I think it's clear, Chair, where the government is not going, and that is into the world of transparency. They talk a good game about democracy, but when we keep seeing charges and allegations and everything that's going on in the Senate, and we have a government that passes a fixed date election law only to violate it in the very first term they passed it, this is a government that doesn't respect democracy. And if you don't respect democracy, regardless of what the government may think, you can't respect Canadians, because Canadians expect that their democracy is what gives them their rights. So when you don't show that kind of respect to Canadians' democracy, you are showing them a lack of respect.
Not only that, they have a right to know. That's what transparency is about. The old paternalistic ways of doing things are gone, folks. It's over. It's about transparency and being accountable for everything you say and do, and that you don't have the ability anymore to go into committee rooms and tile the door and bar everyone from being in there, and then deny the participants in the room the ability to talk about what happened—particularly when it's none of the issues A through E. But without changing that rule, every motion made by an opposition member that's lost in committee will continue to be protected by law from being put in the light of transparency to the public.
The government does not have a leg to stand on with this issue. They do not. The only reason governments keep this in place is that it serves their needs by muzzling the opposition. We will continue to push for transparency and accountability while this undemocratic and unaccountable government remains in power, and hopefully, after 2015 we can bring a lot of changes to this place and come out at the end of that term, a first NDP-majority term, with a different Parliament, with a different way of doing politics. It won't be perfect, but it will be a lot more transparent, and we won't have the embarrassment this government has of having its members sitting there frantically trying to think how they can defend that particular argument, how they can defend the idea that muzzling the opposition in a democracy is a good and fair idea.
Good luck defending that.
Thanks, Chair.