Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for that very important question. He is quite right that the committee structure as it stands now in this Canadian Parliament, under this government, has strayed significantly from what was intended.
It was intended as a means by which independent members, private members, could work together in a non-partisan way to gauge and to receive the views of Canadians and then to discuss those views as well as the expert advice of individuals who have intrinsic knowledge in these areas and then to develop policies.
The difficulty with the current structure is that the committees are being operated, by and large, as branches of the ministers' offices. They were not intended for that purpose.
We spend our time travelling throughout the country, putting on a charade for Canadians and pretending that their views are going to be taken seriously. Then we come back after weeks and weeks of travel, after hearing hundreds of Canadians, and we devote, as we did yesterday, two hours to the discussion on a draft report written by members of the research staff. To their credit, they have been working very hard and they deserve a lot of credit for their hard work in the finance committee.
If we devote weeks and weeks to listen to Canadians, and then devote two hours for a discussion on those recommendations, it is a sham.
We have seen a secular decline in the role of the MP. We have seen an emasculation of MPs since the late 1960s in this House. It is time, as the hon. member suggested, that private members have an opportunity to contribute to the fullest of their abilities and to actually participate in the creation of public policy.
The best vehicle for that is through the committees. They should be allowed to work in the way that they were initially designed and in the way they worked under the previous Conservative government under committee chairs like Don Blenkarn.