—who was the vice-chair of the committee, and that can happen, of course.
I was struck listening to the words of the Prime Minister in the House of Commons today by the total absence of response. He was asked a number of very direct questions on matters of ethics, for example, and his typical response on these questions on ethics is to say “Well, I'm going to answer questions from the ethics commissioner”, which is effectively saying, “Sorry, guys. I don't want to answer your questions.” That is the only possible conclusion to draw when the Prime Minister of Canada stands up and says he would be happy to answer somebody else's questions implicitly, but not yours.
Well, this is why we have question period. We're supposed to have it so that members can pose questions to the Prime Minister and, hopefully, in most cases, he actually feels somewhat bound to make an attempt at answering the question rather than saying, “I'll just go answer someone else's questions, but not yours”.
We had a direct question—it might have been Mr. MacGregor who posed this question—about whether or not the Prime Minister thinks he should have a criminal record for his past marijuana use. That's a legitimate question. The Prime Minister has said on the record that he smoked marijuana while being an elected member of Parliament while, in fact, voting for tougher sentences for those who use marijuana. Of course we know why he wouldn't want to answer the question. He wouldn't want to tell the House of Commons that he should have a criminal record, but he wouldn't want, on the other hand, to say that people shouldn't have a criminal record for using marijuana, given that it is currently the practice of his government to have in place that criminal charges can be laid against those who use marijuana. These were reasonable, simple, direct questions that were posed to the Prime Minister, and he didn't answer.
Some have proposed reforms to question period that would actually require answers to questions, which would involve the Speaker policing the quality of responses and not just general order and decorum. That would be the sort of thing that would clearly require changes to the Standing Orders, so we can talk about that. If we move forward in a way that reflects a consensus decision-making process, sure, definitely, we can talk about that.