Procedure and House Affairs committee  The Board of Internal Economy minutes?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I've read them. I haven't been assigned a great many stories dealing with the Board of Internal Economy myself, so I don't regularly seek them, if that makes sense.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  But I have read them and seen them, back to 2011.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Offhand, I don't know. We'd have to look over them right now together.... I don't know them that intimately. I'm sorry.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As it stands, I think the status quo, if it were to endure.... This is not ruining Canadian democracy. I don't think the status quo has been disastrous. Our opinion is we can improve things. I think that's the answer to the first part of your question. As to the second part, I'd say that what we'd like to see in the minutes would be similar to what we'd see from a standing committee.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure. Right now, journalists and the public are expected to trust politicians and people of influence, people with power, that everything is going reasonably well, things are handled with care and that everything is above board. In a perfect world, that would be fine, but we don't want to have to trust the word of people who are talking behind closed doors.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think, if I can use the members' expenditure reports as a guide, it would be more detail about each line item. I wish I had one right in front of me so that we could go line by line and talk about what value there may be to each. But I would just say more detail. There is more detail there, of course, than there has been in the past, but with more detail breaking down salaries and purchases, we would know what people were buying.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I get it. No one has said it wrong, it's amazing. You got it right, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, if the picture you're painting leads to a meeting that the public can attend, then I like at least that part of the picture. I'll just make one point of clarification on the composition of the board and my not having a preference, really, on who fills it. I just mean that from the perspective of the CAJ and from the journalist's perspective, transparency isn't at stake in the same kind of way.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As a mini newsroom, this is the funniest-looking newsroom I've ever come across. That's a good question, though. I don't want to speak for journalists who may have found interest in that story about discussing expenses between two MPs. Maybe it's a worthwhile—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think that's because most of it is not newsworthy. Some of it might be, and that's why it's important for it to be there for the public and for journalists to see. I would never suggest that every airline ticket is going to be a news item. The answer to your question is simply that there aren't a lot of news stories about expenses, relatively speaking, compared to the amount of information that's out there, because most of it is not extremely newsworthy.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Real time would be unbelievable. I suspect that would be quite a change to implement. Having said that, I don't think it's any journalist's expectation.... I'm inadvertently speaking on behalf of a lot of people I haven't spoken to specifically about this, but I would suspect that many journalists don't mind the current system whereby there is quarterly reporting, because the point is that it be within a reasonable amount of time that these things are being reported.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That makes sense to me. If you have conversations that are going to be in camera anyway at the subcommittee level, then let it happen. Then to bring those to a public forum, or rather a publicly accessible committee, makes total sense.