I think the bottom line here, as I indicated during my comments, is that if we are to decide as a committee or as Parliament to look at the ways in which we recognize the different roles and responsibilities with additional salaries more broadly, then that's a conversation, if people feel it's worth having, that we would have and we would make a decision on. I'm firmly of the belief that we should not make decisions about our own salaries, and that's what we're proposing to do with this motion. It's to make a decision about someone's own salary. But if we were to talk about that in terms of what would happen in future Parliaments, then as MPs we could all have that conversation, if all parties feel it's worth having, in terms of how salaries or additional salaries were to function.
It's one reason that, even for the base salaries of MPs, the decision was made a number of years ago to not put MPs in the position to make those kinds of decisions about their own salaries. We shouldn't be making those decisions for our own salaries. If we choose to change the way that's done for future Parliaments, that might be a different conversation. The problem here is that we're talking about making a change that individual MPs would be voting on that would affect their own salaries. I don't believe we should be putting anyone in that kind of position.
The idea here is to simply allow for the recognition that needs to be there, in some people's minds, of the fact that someone is sitting on a steering committee, but not put anyone in a position to vote for salary increases, especially in a minority Parliament like this one, where questions like those I raised earlier could come from Canadians.
That's the reason I've chosen to do this.