Well, it was a point of privilege, yes, but anyhow....
Here's why Conservatives should actually vote for this motion. First off, the Conservative brand has taken a real beating over the last few months. There's no doubt about it. In the Ipsos Reid opinion poll that's out this morning, the Conservatives are now in third place for the first time since their party was founded. What this means is that there's a resonance among the population; they are seeing that Conservatives walk, but they won't walk the talk around transparency.
The reality is that for your own constituents, if for nothing else, you have a reason to vote for this particular motion. I know that in my own riding people who voted Conservative last time say that they didn't vote for what they see happening on Parliament Hill and what they see happening in the Senate. But as Mr. Christopherson points out, the Senate actually has a level of transparency around committees that has been destroyed since the Conservatives became a majority, because, as you'll recall, Mr. Chair, prior to 2011, this is how committees functioned.
It is simply untrue to pretend that somehow this motion that's being brought forward is in any way a different approach from what we had, certainly since I first became a member of Parliament in 2004, along with Mr. Christopherson and Mr. Cullen, and Mr. Lukiwski as well, until 2011, when the Conservatives formed a majority. This is how committees functioned. Committees worked by unanimous consent. We ensured that these types of issues were treated in a confidential way. For seven years, we lived under a regime where there was some respect for Canadian taxpayers, some respect for democracy, and respect for transparency.
What changed in 2011? Conservatives decided they were going to bring a wrecking ball to that kind of committee transparency, and ever since then they have tried to bring in camera any issue that they feel will impact them politically in a negative way. That's what this is all about. There's nothing else.
This is how we functioned for seven years. Committees were much better at doing their work under those seven years of transparency than under the last two years of darkness. What we are asking for today is simply to have the Conservatives start to walk the talk. If it will help them get out of third place in the polls, it's probably a net benefit for Conservative members.