Certainly, I would like to comment on that anyway.
The objective of the council, I understand, is to promote the benefits of the Canadian marine industry as an economic generator. Certainly, I think that's important.
The thing to recognize as well in this particular case is that they meet a couple of times a year. As Mr. Julian said, taxpayers are footing the bill for a portion. All the time of the industry people is voluntary. I understand the wage component is simply staff from the government, not any of the marine industry stakeholders. This council was put in place because of a request by the stakeholders, the marine council stakeholders, and it was a Liberal initiative to do so.
I'm curious as to why, if labour is a component they want to put in now, it wasn't included at the time. Certainly, the government at that time responded to the request of industry and didn't include labour, and why they'd want to change that now, I'm not really sure.
I did some research. It does have transparent reporting of all its activities on its website. They've stated they've seen a considerable improvement in the exchange of information between the government departments and between government and industry in particular.
Finally, the membership itself was determined by the people who asked for the industry council to be set up, and that is the stakeholders. That's why I was wondering about what Mr. Bell said, because they're the ones who asked for the membership to not include--or at least they didn't ask for labour or union representatives to be included, so why are we now getting a conflicting message? That's why I was asking Mr. Bell, because I just don't understand that.
I wonder how they would feel about that representation being made now, if indeed they may feel it would work contrary to the purpose of what we're trying to do, and that is a better exchange of information between the government and industry, which they say is very effective, to date.
So I think the motion is a good motion, depending of course on what the council will bring forward. I'd like to hear from them, either as a group or informally, as to whether or not they want this motion, because they're the ones who asked for it to be set up. A Liberal government supported it to be set up. It seems to make sense that if we're hearing contrary opinions today, we should wait to hear from the horse's mouth to find out whether they want it to be. Very possibly, it would hinder the continual good exchange of information.