The interesting thing about the charter.... And I know the chairman will probably get upset at Mr. Thompson, but these are interesting questions, and they deserve interesting responses. One of the weaknesses of the charter, as you well know, is that it was never debated in the House of Commons. That's not a reflection on the government. It's not a reflection on individual members or the minister. It was embraced by all parties, so it wasn't debated in the House.
The knowledge level of the new charter, which normally all of us would have known more about simply because you are in the House, it's being debated, it's being reported by journalists, and there's always that back and forth we see in the House of Commons.... Some days, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to the public, but the whole process is educational. That's been one of the difficulties that really has been a challenge to the department, where the knowledge level that would be held by all of us as individual members of Parliament and even the press gallery itself wasn't there, because it wasn't a really exciting debate. The debate simply didn't occur.
We can identify some areas in the charter that may need some fixing or fine-tuning as we go along, but I think the model is pretty good and probably will withstand the test of time. But real changes can be made. I say it's an open book, and it is open to debate in some areas. I have identified some areas I might be uncomfortable with, but we'll have to see how it plays out. Some of these areas we'll have time to fix in terms of how the benefits would flow to a spouse or a widow, if you will. And often we have to be careful when we are talking; we often say a widow, but it could be a widower, or a family.
I think time is on our side in terms of some of the areas we might have to revisit. That is the beauty of a committee like this, Mr. Valley. The committee can take a look at the charter and take the time to deliberate and do some of the things like a careful examination that didn't occur in the last Parliament.