Thank you, Chair.
Very briefly, just on the two-track notion, Tom, I hear what you're saying about Mr. Bezan feeling comfortable with what's.... I know we have sub judice practices, but there is certainly no guidance or rule. The difference for us is that the privilege argument was raised in the House with respect to members' privileges, and the Speaker found in favour of that argumentation by a whole bunch of people, including Mr. Scott.
Just so committee members can envision this, as an example of how a two-track process would work, one of the likely first speakers to come in with regard to MPs' expenses—and this was a suggestion by Theresa, which I think is a good one—would be the Clerk of the House of Commons. That is someone we've identified already. Wearing another hat, she can also address, at least in terms of the House function side, what the question of privilege means with respect to Mr. Bezan. We're not talking about complicating things. We would have a witness who you would actually call twice. She would just have different supporting staff in order to speak to that. That's just one thing in terms of what we imagine in the two-track process for us.
In this one, in terms of what Elections Canada and the court will be doing, it's somewhat different from what's happened in Parliament in terms of our argumentation with regard to a member standing and voting, which is the particular.... That's what the Speaker found in favour of: that there's a question about this. That's not great, and it's not great to wait for lawyers, with no offence to any who are present, because they don't always finish something off expeditiously.
The only other point I want to make is that as we get through this—and there's some urgency in getting through a debate on this particular part—I would see that the committee allow our...not the independents, but our folks who are not officially part of one of the “recognized parties”, whatever term we use.... We have to find a catchier phrase for that. It doesn't fit on Twitter.