Mr. Chairman, through you to Mr. Lukiwski, when I testified, appearing at the first meeting of the committee, I said that the board operated by consensus. It's my belief that this is an accurate description of how the board operates.
I did say that there had been one vote in my almost nine years' experience as secretary to the board. I believe last night Speaker Milliken referred to one or two instances where there had been votes, some of which predated my time as secretary. Again, those are by far the exceptions.
In terms of consensus, the way the discussions work, I believe as former Speaker Fraser explained it, very often the items that come up can be dealt with quite quickly, and there's agreement reached very quickly. In some cases, the issue is a bit more contentious, and it may take one, two, or possibly three meetings for people to come to a meeting of the minds. That's really the way we operate. I think it's safe to say that the people on the board would regard something that came to a vote as a failure of our usual processes.