Mr. Speaker, like the member opposite, I am not necessarily a huge fan of the NDP, but I still object to his patronizing tone in referring to the question from the NDP. I thought it was a perfectly reasonable question.
What is broken is not the NDP's question but the committee system under the government, of which the Conservatives should be ashamed.
I was in Parliament when we had committees under Liberal governments, and a lot of the members on committees who objected most to government policies were members of the government party. Now we have a system of trained seals where the parliamentary secretary tells everybody what to do, and his little assistant tells him what to do. There is no independent voice on the committee to the point where the Conservatives wipe out testimony they do not like, and none of the members have any independent voice whatsoever.
This is one of the things my leader is addressing. We will, for example, make parliamentary secretaries ineligible to sit on committees. Therefore, that gentleman not only would not be there to boss everybody around, and himself be bossed around by a guy or girl from the PMO, but he would not even be there.
The way committees are supposed to work is that they are to be committees of Parliament, and not run by the executive branch of government.