Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to respond to Mr. Chan's comment. In his last point he said that looking at the qualifications is our mandate. That is our mandate, he said. Under the terms of Standing Order 111(2), which governs our meeting today, that is correct. The preamble is not part of the formal motion, but I read it out to you and the point was, of course, that governed us and that restricted us today. But given the fact that these are germane and important questions, another meeting at which we deal with these questions would be a time at which we could deal with those things. So, we are not, by the nature of this committee, by the nature of our mandate.... And there are some things we ought not to be looking at. We should not be asking about international human rights questions, defence questions, questions relating to the status of women or the Library of Parliament. Those things are outside our mandate.
But the actions of people like members of advisory boards are very much under our mandate. How we choose to deal with this is the subject of any individual motion we would bring forward. So, this new motion would allow us to fill in the lacunae that were left by the nature of the original motion. I have to say, going back to it, that had I realized such restrictions would be in existence under the original motion, I would have raised these objections at the time and sought to broaden our mandate, because I could have told you from the start that I actually thought the members of the advisory committee, whose CVs were posted online, were impressive. So the questions regarding their qualifications were, quite frankly, unnecessary. I didn't doubt their qualifications or their objectivity, but I do have questions about their mandate.
Of course, they have a system for reporting to the Prime Minister. But it is not unreasonable for us to want to get separate information about this. I want to stress this because I think it's an important distinction that might be lost on a casual observer here. The fact that individuals have a mandate to report to the Prime Minister does not mean that they are exempted from a mandate to report to us. That is a general mandate. The Prime Minister is, at least in theory, an agent of the crown, and that is distinct from the House of Commons. So, reporting to the House of Commons is something that is not exhausted by the fact that some form of mechanism exists for reporting to the Prime Minister, an expectation that you report back to the House of Commons and, indeed, to the Senate should it choose to conduct any hearings of its own and invite in these individuals. None of that is exempted. That is a reasonable thing to ask for.
That brings me around to Mr. Chan's initial comment, which was that they're letting us speak to the minister. I have to say that was an odd way of phrasing it, but I don't want to fault him for that. We have a right to question the minister. She is coming here at a time and place that is, frankly, inconvenient from our point of view. She should have been here earlier. Inconvenient—I should use that word advisedly; I don't mean.... It's untimely. She should have been here earlier. The Liberal members insisted on writing into our invitation that she come at a time that fits with her schedule. Well, frankly, that's the way these things are always written. Actually, it's implicit. If ministers don't want to come, we can't force them. So, maybe we should be grateful. Maybe we should be—I don't know—kissing someone's ring in gratitude for having been allowed to summon a witness before this committee. I don't think that is what is conventionally understood, that is what the public understands to be the case here. I don't think the public believes that the ministers are responsible to the crown and the House of Commons represents the peasantry waiting outside who may or may not be permitted by the grandees to ask deferential questions, to humbly beseech a minister of the crown for a question. I think quite the contrary.
I know the minister, who I actually like a lot. I kind of think she likes me too. She gave me her little pink flower yesterday because I forgot to wear a pink shirt. That's pretty cool.