I'm sure you are and many would be, but it was much more difficult for him than for anybody else because he needed to remain in his chair. He speculated on how he was able to do that. I won't get into the details of what we speculated may have occurred or not occurred, but it would have been very difficult. It was probably difficult even for his health, without doubt, and so he would be having flashbacks, I'm sure.
The point I was making was that, 95% or more of the time, the chair is here and able to be here. Obviously when you're the chair of a committee it's a responsibility that you take seriously.
I'm sure you do, Madam Chair.
I know I did when I was chair as well. You make it a priority, as members of committees generally do. However, as chair it's that much more serious that you take the responsibility to be there for those committee meetings. Sometimes other things come up that require a member's attention elsewhere, or maybe it's something in their riding or otherwise, but as chair of a committee you make that much more of an effort to try to be there. Because of that, I don't recall ever having to have one of my vice-chairs sit in the chair when I was chair of the two different committees that I chaired.
Often that's the case. Chairs very rarely need to be vacant from the chair during a meeting, but there are occasions when it does happen for some reason or another. It's very rare that you'll find that either the first vice-chair or the second vice-chair isn't available in that scenario.
I point that out for the simple reason that what's being proposed obviously is to create a third vice-chair. I just don't see that there is a demonstrated need or that it's really something necessary. It does, as I pointed out, come with a pay increase. It's not insignificant by any means. Many Canadians would find—I don't even know what it is exactly—$6,000, roughly, quite significant to their budgets, their bottom lines and their households. I guess that's understandable, given that there is an expectation that those people would be available for that role and it does carry some extra responsibility.
The point I'm making is that so rarely have we ever needed to go to a situation where we need more than a vice-chair and a second vice-chair, that there would certainly be Canadians who would say that's their tax dollars and that money could make a real difference for their families. Do we really need to be paying a third person that kind of money to be a vice-chair?
I know an argument is made, and it is a legitimate one to some degree, that the money is maybe not just in recognition of being available to the chair of the committee, or to be part of a steering committee, or various things like that, but that it's all in recognition of the extra work involved in being your party's critic. Obviously not in all cases is the vice-chair the party's critic, but that quite often happens. That's how it plays out.
I would argue back that those who are not necessarily critics still serve on the committee. There are a number of people that's the case for on this committee. This committee and the finance committee typically sit a lot more hours than other committees do. It's just the reality of the matter. You could maybe make the argument that for committees that sit beyond a certain amount of time, maybe all the members should be paid extra because that's an extra responsibility. I'm not making that argument. I'm just saying that's maybe the argument some would then make.
Also, what about the idea of deputy critics? They're not receiving extra compensation, so is that something that should happen? That would be the logical conclusion of those arguments. I'm not making that argument, because—