Thanks, Chair. I'm glad you asked that question, because it's quite germane to the point.
Before I do that, though, I do want to just give us all a little pat on the back—nobody else can do it; I can tell you that. We started out getting a report on West Block. We became alarmed at the lack of MP input. We were determined, ourselves, at this committee, that it was going to change in the future, and we made a decision that we were going to make an overture to BOIE. Each of us was then asked to go back and lobby our respective whips and members of BOIE. It would seem that was effective, based on what I'm hearing now, that there was constant talk about “PROC, PROC, PROC”. That's good. I'd just start out by congratulating the chair and the committee on being able to do this. Having been around for a while, I can tell you it's pretty big, in the world of moving government and decision-making, that we've been able to insert ourselves in the way we need to.
That being said, based on your last answer, though, it seems to me that we should be pushing for a little more clarity. The very question the chair asked is the one that was on my mind. I thought the combination Speaker/BOIE was the end of the road. I thought, “They make the decision; that's it.” Now I'm hearing it's not quite that simple, because at least the government—in its capacity to allocate money but recognizing that Parliament, and not the executive, controls the purse strings at the end of the day, though they can ask for money, as they will do tonight.... It's Parliament that says, “Yes, you can have the money”, or, “No, you can't have the money.” We see what goes down, down in the States, when that kind of thing gets challenged.
Then there is, as you've mentioned, the National Capital Commission. It gets its oar in the water. There's something called FHBRO or something close to that. It gets its oar in the water. Now we're putting our oar in the water. I think, Chair, that we should ask the staff to come back and give us a flowchart, as well as they understand it. I see the look on your face, and that's why I want it. The fact that it's nebulous leaves us out in nowhere land. We can think we're an important part of this, but we're all politicians. We can make something something or we can make something nothing, starting with the same something—it just depends on what we want to do with it.
I would like to see that clarity. Doing that, Chair, I think would allow this committee to establish the exact role of that integrated working group. To me, their reporting, if you will, or their advice goes to BOIE, yet I think we should still maintain that the group come in to meet with PROC, I guess as a separate entity. We could even define it as a subcommittee of this committee to make sure that it still stays here.
The fact is the parties get to pick who they're sending. Again we're now back into the executive structure of how this place runs, potentially leaving ordinary members once out, meaning they get to pick who those people are. They may or may not be the ones the rest of us would see as the best representatives of our interests. I'd still like to see some kind of line item—not so much on accountability but on input and dialogue—between that integrated working group and this group.
To put all of that in a nutshell, I'd like to see, as well as can be determined—the fact that it's not clear is one reason I want to see it—the flowchart of decision-making. In that I would ask you to include where you see the working group or where BOIE sees the working group. Then, Chair, we'll have an opportunity to delve into the details of that.
I was surprised. I'll tell you I was a bit surprised that BOIE said, “We have decided.” I'm okay, because I think it's a good move, but I was hoping we were establishing the kind of working relationship in which it would say, “This is where we're thinking of going. Does this satisfy your needs?”
To me, there still needs to be a clarification of the relationship between BOIE and final decision-making, the integrated working group, and PROC, and how they actually fit into an actual process.