Mr. Speaker, I will say at the onset that I have enormous sympathy for the notion that the people we hire to the various offices that serve Parliament must have the background and the ability to do their job. In fact, I spoke at great length when I was in opposition about many of the Conservative appointments. I talked about what happened with the public complaints commissioner. What was so disturbing to me about that was that the person in question had no background in the RCMP whatsoever and only had a partisan background.
My problem here is that we have moved to appointments that have been merit-based. We look at the senators in question or, frankly, Madeleine Meilleur, whose background in official languages over 30 years is incredibly deep.
The question I put to the member is twofold. What I see this motion doing is redundant. There has been an agreement that it is in fact Parliament that makes the choice on how these officers are selected. If the committee does not have a veto—in other words, if the committee is not circumventing that privilege—but is only acting as a voice, then that is a voice that already exists in this place. Those powers are already present and already exist.
The second one is of great concern to me as well. People who do great work are sometimes in their lives partisan. That should not exclude them. They should have material and relevant experience for the post at hand, but just because they have at some point in their life engaged in public life, I do not think that should preclude them from office.
I wonder if the member can comment on both the redundancy of this motion and that point about precluding good people with strong records of service who may have at some time been involved in politics.