That's wonderful, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. That is indeed quite helpful. I think in approaching this, there is a lot of validity in terms of just being able to talk as to why prorogation was in fact important and to go through the different lines of the throne speech.
For now, I will continue to focus my attention on the need to ensure that the procedure and House affairs committee is able to remain focused on the pandemic. Bill C-19 is one piece of legislation that allows for procedure and House affairs to remain focused on the pandemic because of the changes to the Canada Elections Act.
I guess where I was going with this was to point out that earlier today, inside the House of Commons, we had a bit of frustration that was starting to get there dealing with concurrence reports. From what I was hearing, a concurrence report was coming, or the idea of calling for concurrence was coming, from the New Democratic Party. My advice was going to be that the New Democratic Party consider Bill C-19 as an area of debate being more important for the floor of the House of Commons than the concurrence report that was being suggested, from what I understand, by my New Democratic friends.
The reason I make that suggestion is that if you go through the report, this is something that PROC did a fantastic job on. Later on tonight, I hope to be able to go into a lot of the details of that particular report. It ensures that if there were to be an election during a pandemic, Canadians could feel that much more comfortable because of the work that PROC has done and the debate and discussions that would follow out of Bill C-19. That is the reason I would say that, if we are going to encourage additional debate on the floor of the House as opposed to having that concurrence report, the member for Elmwood—Transcona could consider having and encouraging a debate on Bill C-19.
Madam Chair, we talk about prorogation and the calling of witnesses and the responsibility of standing committees. I had the opportunity as recently as yesterday to talk about the calling of ministers to committee. I can tell you that it started off with a member from the Conservative Party saying they wanted more than just ministers to appear. I went through what was taking place in the finance committee. I used that as an example.
Maybe I can repeat some of what I said yesterday, because I do believe it's relevant. When we talk about the importance of ministers and the ministers' roles at committee, it is really important that we recognize some of the things that have occurred in the past.
I go to Mr. Barrett who has played a leading role for the Conservative Party inside the House and in certain standing committees. He has indicated a litany of individuals who he would like to see called before committees. I indicated to him about accountabilities and ministerial roles and how, even in Stephen Harper's era, the minister played the critical role.
I gave one specific quote. I'd like to repeat that because I do believe it's important here. It came from the honourable Jay Hill. For those members who aren't familiar with Mr. Hill, he was actually the leader of the government in the House of Commons 10 years ago or so. In fact, if I look at it, it was on May 25, 2010, when Mr. Hill stated:
In our system of government, the powers of the Crown are exercised by ministers who are, in turn, answerable to Parliament. Ministers are individually and collectively responsible to the House of Commons for the policies, programs and activities of the government. They are supported in the exercise of their responsibilities by the public servants and by members of their office staffs.
Further on he said:
Accordingly, responsibility for providing information to Parliament and its committees rests with ministers.
As we look at witnesses and the calling of witnesses, I think some of the more important witnesses in terms of government actions will be found through ministers. The government has made ministers accessible and available for committees on a wide variety of issues.
I think cabinet ministers are accountable to the House of Commons for decisions of the government and of political staff. This is actually a very long-standing tradition of ministerial responsibility. In fact, there have been multiple House committees that have studied, for example, the student service grant. That's what I was making reference to, but one could easily reference other committees at the same time.
If you look at the finance committee in particular, it really amplifies what a committee was able to do in terms of ensuring ministerial accountability. Some incredible individuals appeared before that committee at that political level. There was the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, the Minister of Inclusion and Youth—