Thank you, Chair.
The reason I'm going to support Geoff's motion on this subject is due to a concern I've raised with you, Chair, in the past session. It's not so much to Mr. Trost's comment about the collegiality and informality; I think that generally speaking it does work well.
I think there is a role the subcommittee could help with. As it is right now, and I would think this should continue, the committee sets the general tone, direction, and course of study. I think we can do that at large, balancing all the different duties and interests we have. But it comes to a discussion about the witnesses and who's being brought forward.
The system we have now is to simply dump all the names into the hat, and the chair and the clerk work through them and balance it out. I've expressed concerns about communication, because sometimes it doesn't feel that the panels or the format we get are balanced. I'm not casting aspersions, but once we have the study we want to do set out—we want to do three weeks on this or two weeks on that—we should then ensure that everybody's mutual interests are met in terms of the panel, which we all know, as members, is critical.
The panel can help guide us significantly. Some of the upcoming issues are quite sensitive. We might be dealing with things about eco-energy and nuclear energy. Some of these things are broad and can be quite contentious. A subcommittee can play a very specific and formal role that way. The general tone and the direction of study is, I think, set well by this committee, but it's that second piece.
We've gone back and forth with this, Chair, as you know, raising concerns and trying to address them, but it didn't really work out in the last session to our satisfaction.