Mr. Chair, while I'm new to the committee, I'm not necessarily new to the committee format, and different committees have different formulations when it comes to subcommittees. Generally speaking, I don't think anyone in this room would argue with the fact that committees reflect the percentages of different parties in Parliament. That is the way this committee is set up. That's the way most--not all, but most--of the committees are set up. That's why the chair comes from the governing party.
If you want to run a parallel government on a different dimension, that's when you can change the democratic will of the people. Quite frankly, when I hear people say that the committee for legitimacy or otherwise and to be taken seriously can't have too much government influence, that seems to be counter to the democratic will of the people. That's the basis upon which this whole institution is built. Therefore, it seems to me rather strange that you wouldn't have a person like the parliamentary secretary on the subcommittee. It makes a lot of sense. To the average person it would be somewhat humourous if you had committees arguing with the government of the day on a totally different wavelength.
However, there is an independence of committees; that's why we have them. They're supposed to take part of the load off. If you look at municipal and provincial governments, committees take the load off and study in-depth issues that come before the general assembly, which in this case is the House of Commons. We take the load off. We go into the minutiae, into the in-depth study not only of current government legislation or proposed government legislation, but we can as a committee take on different studies. That is well within the mandate, well within the history of this place. To preclude the parliamentary secretary or anyone else from being on the subcommittee would seem to me to be rather strange.