It's been flawless. I have no complaints. It has been a minute and it's been good so far.
Our concerns remain. We have the motion by Mr. Reid that was then somewhat helpfully amended by you, Mr. Lamoureux, in your former position as not chair.
What I'm hoping for over the next while from the government, and potentially from Mr. Reid because it's his motion, is on the two main questions that we posed when this was first presented to us. They were, why the panic and how does this make things better? We've had some reference back from the House, from the clerk, as to what the potential impacts might be, yet the lack of argumentation from the government as to why they're doing this should give us all concern. Certainly in the opposition it gives us concern. We know Mr. Reid as a thoughtful parliamentarian and that he usually doesn't do things without a reason. Yet we have found ourselves over the last couple of meetings, since he presented this motion and under some questioning in the House, lacking a rationale or justification or some sort of bearing from him as to where he hopes to take Parliament in the way that we change our laws.
This has not been what I would call an elegant process to this point, Mr. Chair. It certainly wasn't the plan of the NDP coming to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. We have two pressing matters that we hope to deal with today—well, three. One is the motion by Madam Turmel about the rules guiding in camera meetings. We hope to have a good conversation with the government about that because there are rules that guide other public office holders from school boards and municipalities. Even the Senate, for goodness' sake, has guidelines about when you can and can't go in camera, yet in the House of Commons we don't. We have this play-it-as-you-go scenario, which is not very good for democracy. As we've seen the government struggle over the last number of weeks with issues surrounding accountability and scandal and whatnot, certainly a little transparency would do everybody a lot of good. So let's start with some of the foundations of Parliament's work, that is, our committees, not only here but all committees. That's what Madam Turmel's motion is about and she'll eloquently speak to that later.
A second order of business is that we have a direct order from the House to deal with the affairs of Elections Canada and Mr. Bezan on a question of privilege, a prima facie case, which has been directed to this committee. I'm casting no aspersions or blame. I don't know the case intimately or nearly enough to have a strong opinion one way or the other, but for any sitting member of Parliament to have this kind of ongoing conflict about an election they were in doesn't bode well. I'm sure that Mr. Bezan's interest will be to have that cleared up as soon as possible as well. We're the ones holding that question; this committee has to deal with that question. Our suggestion as the official opposition will be to seek a two-track implementation of that, and then there's the third order of business, MPs' expenses.
There have been a number of suggestions from all sides as to how to change the way we do things. Some changes have already made through the Board of Internal Economy, but the work is certainly not done in terms of the transparency of how we use taxpayer money as members of Parliament.
There are two tracks I'm suggesting, and we'll get into this a little bit later. I think Mr. Julian may have some comments. But we need to be able to clear up and come to some resolution on the case of Mr. Bezan, because that's a question of privilege. Normally in a committee—Tom and Mr. Reid will know this well—when a question of privilege comes through the House, the Speaker finds a prima facie case and sends it to us. It normally takes precedence over everything else we have to do, because there's been some disruption in the House as to whether a particular member has done something, and the Speaker says, “I see enough evidence so I want the committee to take this up and do it quickly.”
With the loss of the month or so due to prorogation and the loss of another committee meeting this week, on Thursday, because of the change in the schedule to allow for the Conservatives to attend their convention, this committee is under some time pressure. By the way, Mr. Chair, we don't plan to occupy all our time on these points, but I wanted to lay the groundwork, particularly for my colleagues across the floor, as to what business we have in front of us. I suggest there is the need to press ahead and potentially, as Tom has indicated previously, book some extra meetings if the work requires.
We have a deadline of December 2, as we will all recall, to get back to the House with a report in hand that's been edited and approved by this committee. If one back-tasks from there, the ability to get all that done between now and then, with essentially the month of November to do the work, seems impossible from our perspective in the official opposition.
To suggest that we can do a good job of reforming, renewing, and reviewing all of the ways that we report expenses, and look at other legislatures and all the things in that motion, which we were directed unanimously by the House to do, and do that over the course of a potential seven meetings, that's not on for us. We're not going to do a good job. We'd have approximately four or five meetings to hear witnesses, one or two to write a report, and one to review it. That's not going to get the job done that Canadians expect us to get done.
Our suggestion is going to be that we'll certainly need more meetings, potentially with some evening sittings. We'll work out that calendar amongst ourselves so that we're also able to deal with the affair of Mr. Bezan as well, so there's not a competing interest, because certainly if I were in his place.... Again, I'll emphasize that I don't have a horse in this race. I don't have an opinion about the details of his case, but if I were Mr. Bezan I wouldn't want the procedure and House affairs committee coming back and saying that it would deal with me in a few months, in four or five, in the New Year, or that maybe in February to resolve this dispute between me and Elections Canada. That wouldn't make me feel very good or that I was having my issue dealt with properly.
We remain concerned—and I saw Mr. Lukiwski get himself on the list—that through all of this debate about this particular motion as amended by you, Chair, that we've yet to really hear any rationale and justification for it from the government, not once yet, and that seems passing odd. Normally when you have a very good argument to make, you make it. When you have a motion that's going to change the way we make laws in Canada and the process by which we amend bills, ideally to try to improve bills, and you feel like you have a good case, I've never known Conservative colleagues opposite to be shy of a microphone when they feel they have a good argument to make.
I hope that in the time we have available, which is not much today, because we've made some commitments in terms of voting on this resolution today, you will at least offer us something. Give the Canadian public some reason to believe your case rather than just saying, “Here's the motion, take it or leave it, vote for it or vote against it”, because as it stands right now, clearly there's no support from the NDP for something that changes law without justification, and that's what we have in front of us.
Thank you for that time, Mr. Chair. I'll jump back in if need be, but I wanted to lay out the groundwork for our committee today so that it would know what's in front of us and know that we have a lot of incredibly important work to do, both on the personal level with Mr. Bezan but also on the larger level for all MPs and the Canadian public, with regard to how we spend money and how committees deal with in camera motions. In the light of all that's swirling around these days, I would imagine that the government would be keen on this, and in fact would be grasping for any symbol they could use to show the public, and their voters in particular, that they are in fact interested in transparency and accountability.
Too often, in camera motions, as you know, Chair, have been used abusively to just shut off the public from debates that members don't want them to see, rather than having anything to do with the usual reasons why a school board or a municipality would go in camera, which is to do with legal and personnel matters. Those are all legitimate. That's what we're proposing, that the tool exist but exist only for those very specific circumstances where in camera discussion is required and we have to shut the public out.
Thank you very much for that time, Mr. Chair.