Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't think the privilege of free speech that protects members from lawsuits or defamation would apply in most contexts in a board meeting. I've never heard a member do that in a board meeting, by the way. But to take your example hypothetically, were it to happen, no, I would not expect that the member in doing that would be legally protected under parliamentary privilege.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Every time a member of Parliament steps out of the House and talks to the media, he faces the same sorts of concerns, and presumably he or she is speaking to the media in the public interest but accepting that restraint. So it would apply at a board meeting as well.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, I've seen three Speakers playing the role of chair of the board. They were each quite different from the others, and arguably some were more effective than the others. I don't want to go into comments about the various Speakers and their effectiveness. Obviously the chair of any meeting is in a position to bring a meeting to a consensus.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I attended when there was a matter that had legal applications—certainly legal matters, but also other matters that had legal dimensions. As it turned out, I was there quite often.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It varied from one season to another.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Fifty per cent.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, Mr. Chairman. That was the view I expressed. I'm not saying the world would fall apart if you did that. I just think it would put the business of the House and the operations of the House at risk, which would not be desirable. I personally am not prepared to throw in the flag and say that members can't be trusted to look after their business.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No. It was to diminish the partisanship, in the sense of allowing the public view that's not attached to a partisan interest being expressed. The elected office idea—and it could be school board, city, provincial, territorial, federal—was to sensitize the public lay representative to the context in which members of Parliament work.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I did suggest they be appointed by the Speaker, from applications, without consultation with the House leaders. So there's no input to the Speaker from the House party as to which ones should be selected. He makes his judgment.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As you know, Mr. Richards, clients don't take their legal advice publicly. But I have on occasion given legal advice publicly at committees like this when I was law clerk. So yes, it depends on the matter in respect of which the advice is being given, and it might be something that's better given to the subcommittee in private rather than publicly.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I recognize the sensitivity about accountability, but that can be overstated, in a sense, as the previous member, Mr. Hyer, was saying, about counterproductive costs. In the area of accountability, we're seeing reports from the public service about how they're spending so much time meeting the rules that have come in with accountability that they're just not getting their job done.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There are two points I would say in response to that, Mr. Chairman. One is that there's a certain commonality to be presumed, and correctly so, for the board's business—financial administration—between the interests of the independent members and the interests of every other member.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, if the scenario you're describing were to emerge in public meetings, it would represent a profound failure on the part of the board members to discharge their public duty in the public interest. Having said that, yes, the partisan atmosphere is the air that members of Parliament breathe; it's all around them.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Lamoureux just mentioned that the commission in Manitoba, apparently, is comprised entirely of sitting members of Parliament. In that sense, the representativeness is there. The head of that commission may not be a member of the legislative assembly; I'm not sure. It all depends on how you frame it, legislatively, setting it up.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, I don't know the Manitoba model myself, nor what the composition of that commission is. You were on it as an MLA—