Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the time.
I too am the father of a young son, a four-year-old, so I welcome some of these suggested changes and look forward to working with my colleagues on this committee and hopefully making this a more family-friendly place. I welcome that discussion and look forward to it.
I want to quickly reference a few things that were mentioned.
Your party ran on openness and transparency. My first meeting was not too long ago, and again the parliamentary secretary was here and there, and then slowly moved away. Now, I understand that he's not a voting member, but the involvement was supposed to be removed. What I witnessed in that first meeting is that he was basically directing traffic. I know you said that about the experience, but it still goes to the issue that Mr. Christopherson mentioned about how you remove yourself from the majority government and how you become more independent. Again, as a new MP who was just elected, I heard what was going on throughout the election, and then I watched what happened in committee. They were two totally different things. If you want to expand on this, I'd be happy for you to do that.
Again, I'm concerned about the Senate process, with the list going in secret to the Prime Minister. In secret, the Prime Minister makes that recommendation, and you really never see the names. You really never see what is going on. I think that needs to be a little more transparent. I agree that change in the Senate needs to be done, but to me that secrecy doesn't change anything, really. It's still in secret and you don't actually see what's going on.
In terms of electoral reform, you may have said something different, but before Christmas you mentioned that you have ruled out any kind of referendum on this subject. I apologize if you've changed or if something happened after that.
I was at the minister's breakfast earlier this week. Everyone sat at a table and took suggestions. Everyone at the table had something different to say on electoral reform, every single person. There were eight people at the table, and we had eight different ideas, good or bad. At the end of the day when you choose somebody, you'll choose one method out of all these suggestions, and I think it's very tempting for any government in power to take the suggestion that benefits them and say that they've consulted Canadians and, “This is what they say”.
I urge you, Minister, to reconsider, if you haven't already, your stance on that referendum. I don't think it prejudges any process. I think you can still consult and you can still come up with the ideas, but at the end of the day, I think you look at that idea and say to the people, “This is what we've consulted on and how about this?” I think we really do need to have that referendum on this. You've seen it in other jurisdictions and I would urge you to look in that direction.