Mr. Chair, I would like to thank the committee staff for their research on the consultations. I had time to read the first page, at least.
I want the committee members to look at the last paragraph of that document, in either the English or the French version. It says that the National Capital Commission's public consultation process was studied, and it was noted that the same practice has been observed within the organization previously. The current public consultation process is even described in the NCC's guidelines; have a look at Appendix B. Therefore, we can assume that the legislative amendment will simply formalize an existing practice.
I think it is important to take note of that information. On Monday, we seemed to get a bit caught up in the meaning of the term “consultation” versus “participation”. I am very glad to see that the term “consultation” was not a problem. The practice is commonplace at the NCC. This simply formalizes what it is already doing, what it says in its internal rules. I hope that the Bloc Québécois's amendment, BQ-4, dealing with public consultations and the governments of the provinces concerned, will be accepted, just as the amendment was accepted requiring a master plan for the nation's capital to be submitted for approval to each House of Parliament.
I do not think it is too much to ask the country's parliamentarians that, as representatives of the people, they make a decision on the capital city of all Canadians once every ten years. Several pieces of legislation require us to do so more often than that. We review the country's banking laws every five years, and Parliament is asked to make decisions on them. In my opinion, parliamentarians should be asked to make a decision regarding the master plan for the national capital region once every decade.