I appreciate that. You would know that those are some of the concerns I had and that I know many others had as well in regard to the bill as it was originally written, and even in the second form.
I certainly would agree with you that the amendments you are suggesting are valuable amendments. You have three areas that you seek to reform with the bill, the first being the rules about party nominations, which you have just mentioned. I think the concern was that the bill was too prescriptive, that Parliament was deciding for the political party how it would conduct its affairs. You've put back the ability of the political party to make the choice, prescribing that there must be something in the political party's rules, but that it's their choice as to how they would conduct themselves, and this gives them the power to govern themselves.
The same goes for the caucus provisions. You're allowing the caucus to make a choice as to whether it wants to utilize the rules in choosing its leadership and deciding who can and can't be a member of the caucus, again allowing the caucus to make choices about how it would govern itself. These are principles that I think we all would agree make some sense.
The case that becomes a little foggier arises when you talk about the provisions for the party leadership. The leader of the party is of course the leader of the caucus and therefore should be accountable to the caucus in some way, but also is the leader of the political party and therefore should be responsible and accountable to the members of that party in some way.
The one concern that I think remains with the suggestions—including the amendments—that you're proposing would be whether in fact the changes, even with the amendments, still put too much emphasis on the caucus and therefore remove some ability for the political party to have the same accountability.
Obviously this is something that every political party views somewhat differently, but at the end of the day, both the caucus and party members feel that there is some need for accountability to them. The concern would be whether this, then, by tipping the balance of power more towards the party caucus, removes some ability for there to be accountability to the political party, putting the control more—
And I know this is a philosophical debate. Some people believe that maybe it should be more the one way, and some believe it should be more the other. But that's the concern: should every political party have the ability to make that decision for itself?
Do you not feel that maybe, by allowing a caucus to make the decision to take this power for itself, the bill removes some of the control from the party and the political party members? I'd want to hear your thoughts on that.