It's like going to a fight and a hockey game breaks out.
Whenever I hear about a lob question, I always think that every time the member from Huron—Bruce asks a question, it's a Lobb question. His name is Ben Lobb. That's a little play on words.
don't think we want to discount the value of a question to a committee chair. I know, Mr. Chair, you did receive questions a couple of weeks ago, and I think they were relevant to the work of the committee. As I think Ms. Kwan pointed out, we do have work that goes on in the committee. I think there are times where questions to committee chairs are relevant.
Perhaps a matter for future discussion might be reviewing the practice of the other place immediately following the most recent election. Many of the questions that were being asked during their question period were to committee chairs, because there was no leader of the government in the Senate at the time, in the other place. By necessity, the questions went to committee chairs. That's a perfectly acceptable practice, and I think there is some value to having those questions to chairs of committee.
Beauchesne's talked about that a little bit. I don't have Beauchesne's in front of me now. I believe it's chapter 10 or chapter 12 where they talk about the legitimate right to ask private members who are chairs questions during question period. I think there is an opportunity to have a legitimate discussion, and we can have a debate about lob questions as well.
I think that is a worthwhile debate. There's also the situation where you're legitimately seeking information from a committee chair. I think there's a great value to be had in that. From time to time, we have seen a minister or a parliamentary secretary answer a question that may have been directed to a committee chair. If we're legitimately looking for information on the work of a committee, it would certainly fall to the chair of that committee to answer.