Chair, I do appreciate the extra effort to make sure the full rounds were completed. Thank you.
Madame, just to come back again to competency, in terms of what you would be thinking about as you have each of these in front of you, my understanding is that a person would have to be recommended by an organization to get their name in the hopper. I'm not 100% sure on that, but if someone could find a way to get put on the list unilaterally, here's my concern. Are you not worried at all, when you think about applying this, that there is the potential for an elite body—and all of us here qualify as elites—to appoint other people through the lens of that elitism, so that we end up with more elites? I say that as a person with a working-class background. Although I've been in electoral politics for over three decades, I'm just from the working class. If my resumé went in to you the first time I was elected, it wouldn't even stay on the table, let alone be considered.
My concern, then, is how you go about selecting candidates that may not even find themselves in front of you. If we use the benefit of democracy, people like me can get elected, because there are certain traits that electors want in a lawmaker. There are a lot of other things. I know there are lots of lawyers and doctors, and that's good, but I'd like somebody in there who knows what it's like to get up every day and have to get their fingernails dirty to make a living.
I'm wondering how we avoid the continuation of the view that the Senate is full of elites—because they are all connected to somebody—and how this process and your thinking and your colleagues' thinking are going to give us a different result. Can you help me understand how you think we can get there?