Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
First of all, you've sort of laid out a couple of things. One is the issue around first to speak, and the second one is.... I have to tell you, as colleagues, I wasn't sure what was happening when I read the agenda, which indicated “televised”. Mr. Chair, I think your words were, “Well, it's just easier to flip the switch and have the televisions on”.
I would never be, and I don't think we should ever be, concerned about the work the media goes through to come to a public meeting. That's their job. If they choose to come, then they come. The meetings are public, and they can do that in any of the meetings. In fact, I'm on the international trade committee, and if they choose to come to those public meetings, they can bring all their equipment, and that's what they do.
I am concerned that we have taken a significant step to televise something that has been, in my history on this committee, limited to when the Auditor General comes, or when we do estimates and the ministers come. That is pretty much when we televise. We know that ahead or we're told ahead, and in this particular case it came out in the agenda. As has been mentioned, it is a direction where we as a committee are going down the wrong road when we can just say we'll just flip the switch and we'll televise the whole thing, taking away from the responsibility of the media to come and report public meetings.
All of the dialogue in an open public meeting is in the blues for anyone to read.
I also sat on this committee when we were in a minority government. I'm not sure where the big surprise is. In the committees I've been on over my six years here, committee business has always been done in camera. We made some exceptions the other day, and obviously they may or may not have been the right ones, but we decided we would just move ahead with some committee business.
Here we are now going back to what has been the standard and the norm for committees when you sit down, because you're talking sometimes about finances, the organization of who is going to come and when they're going to come, and who is going to be here whenever. I think that's a bit like the business meeting at home with your own business. That is what we should be doing.
So when we televise that.... Mr. Ravignat had said that this committee had always functioned well. I can tell you, Mr. Ravignat, that before you got on it, in the last session, it did not function well. It functioned well when we had the.... Chairs make a difference in how it's run.
Sir, I'm not taking a shot, but don't let yourself get in the position where the last chair of this—in fact I think you agreed with us—was making arbitrary decisions and making arbitrary comments without consulting and following the committee. You cannot have someone making unilateral decisions, and that's what happens when we get into this predicament.
Parliament has been asked to have a four-hour discussion and debate on Wednesday night on the Department of National Defence. As you mentioned, it would be nice to have Minister Peter MacKay, Mr. Fantino, and maybe Chris Alexander. All those folks are going to be there. It's going to be a great opportunity for all of us, quite honestly, to ask questions and for people who wouldn't normally get the opportunity here to have their opportunity in those four hours.
I think it is going to be a process that gives us an opportunity to follow. As Mr. Allen said, maybe we can be less secretive. I agree that much of that is because of the number of reports. If you go back to the number of reports we've been able to run through in this committee, in fact we're almost caught up. We're looking at an agenda here to deal with the reports of the Auditor General. There are six of them, and we've been asked to now start to prioritize them. Those are always committee business. We will decide how we're going to move forward with that, and then the other ones.
The other reason we're in camera is to follow the routine that has been there, which from my experience is that of committee business.
Mr. Chair, in a word of encouragement to you, and also a few critical words I must say, I would ask that we start to move back to doing committee business in camera, as it has traditionally been done. Let's move ahead so we can not only resolve the F-35 one, but also start to put together the agenda for the 2012 spring reports.
Thank you very much.