Mr. Speaker, thank you for staying with us here so late this evening. Of course thanks also to the people at the table, the other staff who are here, including the interpreters and technical staff. It is great that everyone here is participating in making it possible for us to keep up the reputation of this place as the place of many words.
I was reminded of a friend of mine who went back to what he called his motherland. I will not mention what country it is because it is not nice to pick on the people from Holland. He said he went back to visit his relatives and there was one thing that amazed him. Everybody spoke at the same time and no one was listening. I hope that is not true here tonight.
I will be quite specific to the topic we are addressing tonight, and that is the change in the standing orders. Right now it is only about 10.40 p.m. back home in Alberta and only 9.40 p.m. in British Columbia. That is why some of us who are from the west are still feeling so energetic and ready to go for a couple more hours.
However, if any of them are watching, and perhaps others, they should know that the standing orders are the rules which regulate, not only the debate in the House but also pretty well the management of committees, and the way things are done around here in terms of taking an idea through the process where it actually becomes legislation.
In my intervention I would like to reinforce a few things and perhaps come up with one or two ideas which members may not have heard during the debate today.
First, I do not think this requires a change in the standing orders since they already permit the television broadcast of committees. However, it was mentioned by several that perhaps there should be greater coverage of committees by television. I would like to make a suggestion, and I am not sure it requires a change in the orders as they are.
One thing that occurred to me was that there are probably increasingly more people who have access to the Internet than who have access to cable or satellite. With the new satellite dishes, perhaps that will change. I do not know the exact numbers, but I would like to recommend that a very inexpensive way of making it possible for Canadian citizens to watch their parliament at work would be to have an Internet where people could go to the House of Commons. There would be a place to click committees to view a committee. Then they pick which committee they want to see and there it is with the video streaming on the screen. We could enable I imagine millions of people who would be glued to their computers watching. Technically, it is quite possible to do that. It is relatively inexpensive and does not cost any more. I know we are putting up satellites in order to get Internet access to all the remote parts of the country now. It could be a tremendous unifying force for our country.