Madam Chair, I'll try to be very brief.
When it comes to the issue of volunteers, it was a predecessor committee of yours, PROC, some years back that excluded volunteer contributions from those things that could be understood as gifts or benefits to a public office holder. It wasn't Gowling's interpretation. It was the House of Commons committee itself that made that distinction.
If I'm trying to understand Mr. Dion's struggle, though, I think that it goes back to some comments that both Dr. Dance and Dr. Thomas made. It's the idea of somehow achieving a degree of transparency and accountability for what takes place on the Hill, so that there's an ability to track, monitor and evaluate. I would suggest if I could, Madam Chair, that there is actually a very easy fix to this. Much like is undertaken with respect to sponsor travel, which is exempt as well for its own compelling reasons, having the participating members register the volunteer, including identification of the source of sponsorship, and publish that every year would address the issue of transparency in a complete way.