This is not a panel, this is an advisory council, and it has no teeth whatsoever. The intent is not to have this as a decisive or decision-making body. That is not what it is. It's a consultative body.
Will Luc and I be interested in what comes out of it? Of course. As you have noticed there, I will chair this council, starting on May 2. I'm very interested in finding ways of improving railway safety by any means and matter.
We had something before. It wasn't working very well because there were too many people participating. So we thought, for this committee to be productive, we needed to limit it to a manageable number, which is around 20 or less. That is what we have now.
The thing we have put in the mandate is any safety issue that needs to be addressed and any regulatory proposals. So a regulatory proposal that the department could make would go through this committee for consultation. Any rule that affects the nation, any national rule by the railway industry, would go through this committee, and anything else that the members of the committee would bring. But the goal is to improve safety.
As to what we will do with the recommendations, I am the minister's adviser on a day-to-day basis. So if I chair this and I have recommendations on specific things to do, of course I will have to report and make a recommendation to the minister.
We have another similar committee that works very well. We kind of modelled the membership and the number of people on the transportation of dangerous goods advisory council. Over the years, the TDG council has made a number of recommendations that actually came out very positively in regulatory improvements, for instance. So we are very optimistic as to the work that would come out of this council.