Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank Mr. Christopherson for his contribution on this point.
The government supports the basic premise of what you're putting forth. We took this position in opposition. As you'll recall, the member for Westmount—Ville Marie in the 41st Parliament spoke with respect to the basic principles attached to this, and our leader introduced a private member's bill with respect to the basic premise in regard to the motion you're putting before this committee today.
The only suggestion I would have on a couple of points with respect to the substantive motion that's before the committee.... First of all, we think some additional items should be considered to expand the list of what we think would be appropriate matters to be in camera, and I'll introduce those in a moment.
The other point we have is on where you talk about how “any motion to sit in camera should be debatable and amendable”. My point is that I'm okay with it being debatable for, let's say, three minutes. I don't see why it needs to be amendable. It's either an up or down vote from my perspective; we either agree to it or we don't agree to it. Because at that point, we're dealing with a prescribed list of items, and only those items can go in camera. We vote it either up or down. It's straight up. Also, I don't want us to take an enormous amount of committee time to make those decisions once we know that we're dealing only with the prescribed list of matters that can go in camera.
Finally, with respect to the last point, which was basically about the minutes of the meeting, from my perspective—again, since we're dealing again with a prescribed list of issues—the result of those votes, because we're only dealing with a prescribed list, should only be recorded with the unanimous consent of the committee, because the only way you go in camera is that you're dealing only with those issues.
I'll give you a couple of amendments that I would suggest. For example, here's how the motion would then read. I would simply delete the provision that says “and amendable”, so it would read instead “That any motion to sit in camera should be debatable for”—I'm going to just propose this—“not more than three minutes”. So you can debate it and get your points out. We're only dealing with these items, okay? Then we'd vote it up or down.
Then I would simply add three other provisions to the list that you've already prescribed. I'm fine with the list you have so far, but I would suggest that these other items would be appropriate as well.
I would add an (f) that would read “for matters of members' privilege”. Again, I think that might be appropriate for us to go in camera on. I would then add a (g) “for the discussion of witness lists”. Again, it might be appropriate to go in camera for whatever reason. I would add an (h) “for any other reason”, because we might forget what that particular reason might happen to be, “on the consent of the entire committee”—so we all have to agree, okay?—“or on the advice of the clerk”. There might be a reason that we haven't thought about it in this list, but it gives us a way out.