Okay. Good.
Is there anybody else on this? No.
Before I do that, let me just take one moment. There has been a major change in the makeup of the committee and in the leadership of the committee. Daryl Kramp and Andrew Saxton have been on this committee for a long time. Daryl and I actually go back to 2004, when we first got here. That leaves Mr. Shipley now as the senior-most member on the government benches, followed by Mr. Aspin. Of course, we've now had Mr. Simms join, replacing Mr. Byrne.
One of the things I hope we'll get a chance to talk about at the next meeting is the culture of this committee. It is somewhat different from other committees, given that our responsibility is not policy; it's really not the politics of the day. We're a committee of accountability, and all of our work comes from what the Auditor General does. I can tell you that this committee is seen, even in an international context, as a leading committee doing the work of public accounts and being an effective committee. I'm not saying we don't have our political moments, but we still have the ability to get above our partisanship and deal with the issues the Auditor General is bringing to us.
If I may say so, Mr. Kramp was the one who would often say, both when we were in opposition and to his full credit also as a government member, that when the Auditor General finds there's something wrong and it's just plain wrong, it needs to be called that, and we need to focus on what are we going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again. The politics of all that can happen elsewhere, but we focus on the work of the Auditor General. Otherwise, colleagues—and I say this especially to the new members—the more partisan we are in our work, the more we're letting down Canadians, because they see the Auditor General as their friend on the Hill. They see the Auditor General's work as their check and balance. We do justice to that when we aren't being partisan.
The government is still going to do what it has to do in terms of defending the government, and the opposition is still going to attack. But there is a point at which it moves from being sort of fair game into just straight, pure partisan politics, with the cheap shots and everything else. Once we're there, in my view, and given the purpose of this committee, we are failing.
In other committees, when they're dealing with policies and initiatives, they have the built-in “this”. Here our system asks all of us to get above that. It's not easy. It doesn't happen all the time, but if we can be there when we need to—and I just say this to the newer members—historically that's when we feel the best about ourselves. When we've done something, a really good piece of work in terms of governance, moving forward, and addressing issues the Auditor General has raised, and we do it in a non-partisan way, then we really are making a difference and we as this committee are serving Canadians in the best way this committee was meant to serve Canadians, and that is as an oversight committee dealing with the issues of the Auditor General.
The only other thing I might mention is that we are very male-heavy on this committee.
Madam Ablonczy, are you a permanent member of this committee?