Okay.
We've been discussing the substance of the issue here—what Mr. Christopherson and Mr. Simms have been doing—the question writ large.
Turning to the question writ as narrowly as possible, what strikes me is that there are considerable differences between the situation in 2004 with President Bush and the situation on March 21 or 22. Thinking of the more closely proximate or more homologous situations, I wonder if this might not be a question to think about. It seems to me that, basically, this committee administers the relationship between security and the access of MPs to Parliament Hill.
It comes up, although it's an awkward way of doing it, via motions of privilege. It's just the way these things come to us. We have to administer it as circumstances continue to change. One of the most obvious ways in which they change is that visitors coming up here require various degrees of security. We have to dispense with their motorcades. Roadways are blocked. There are weather conditions. We are also shifting what buildings are being used for what purpose, so a year and a bit from now, the House of Commons will be meeting in the West Block.
Having said all of that, what I want to suggest is this. It seems to me that there are some practical similarities that are worth taking note of, one of which is that, in a number of these incidents, people were on a bus on their way to Parliament Hill. The bus got delayed. There was a lack of information about why it was being delayed and whether it was going to be delayed longer. When they realized there was a problem, they then had the option of hopping off the bus, at which point they were prevented from crossing the street. Most obviously, this is the case in Mr. Godin's situation.
What occurs to me is that, at a practical level, we might be able to resolve some of these problems if, when buses are delayed, people can be shepherded up the side of the street. If you get out at the car wash, you can be shepherded up the side of the street, and that doesn't involve crossing a road and potentially getting run over by somebody. That might resolve the situation in a very practical, low-profile way, which doesn't require the education of people from other police forces, or anything except a practice of letting people out so that they can walk up that north side of the little road at the top of the Hill and avoid traffic that might have resulted in about half of these cases. If we could, let's just put that thought into our intellectual baggage as a potential way of resolving this in a low-profile way.