Well, I was going to say I welcome Mr. Alexander to his naïveté.
I've been in that position. You are a mouthpiece for the government. That's the idea. That's the point of being a parliamentary secretary. You're sitting here as the representative of the minister at this committee. That's the point.
You may wish to style yourself as a servant of Parliament, that you are a parliamentary secretary and that you have the integrity to separate your role. If you succeed in that, you'll be the first parliamentary secretary I've ever seen succeed, and I've sat on a lot of committees: justice, finance, government operations, etc. So with the greatest of respect, I think your argument is not based in any experience I've ever seen in 14 years being here.
Last week I went over and congratulated Minister MacKay on his vote. The reason I congratulated him--it was 294 to one, which shows enormous support on the part of Parliament--was that he worked at it. He worked at it and he got that support. He got it because he didn't try to skewer the debate by overloading this way or overloading that way.
That is what you, as government, want out of this committee--ultimately support, and independent support, for the government's agenda. We are here to critique. We might even criticize, but we're here to critique. Ultimately you'll get your way because you have the mandate. There are, how shall we say, “symbols” of independence such as this, which will go a long way towards creating the credibility of this committee, which I think is very important. Certainly it's important over four years.