Thank you very much, Joann, and thank you very much to the committee for the support.
I want to mention, if you will allow me, how honoured I am to chair this committee. For seven years I sat where Mr. Byrne is, alone on this committee, working as hard as I could and never imagining that I would have a shot at being chair because it would require being the official opposition, and that just didn't look as though it was going to happen.
There you go. Life unfolds, and here you are. I commit to doing the best I can.
I'm hoping we can return to the culture we had during the time of Mr. Williams and Mr. Murphy, when there was a minimal amount of partisan activity. Colleagues who were on the committee with me during those seven years will recall that when it was time to be partisan, we were partisan. We said we were going to be partisan. We got into the ugly mix of all that that means, and when we were done, we returned to doing the job we are here to do, which is to ensure that the accounts of the people of Canada are appropriately analyzed and that money is being spent properly. That is not partisan.
There is always a risk in doing this, but the person who has served second-longest after me on this committee is Mr. Kramp; we came on here back in 2004 together, and I want to thank him for his approach in the past. I hope we can continue that approach, even though we're a minority now. Without putting words in Mr. Kramp's mouth, the sentiment was that if there was something wrong, it needed to be said that it was wrong and we needed to find ways to fix it, regardless of which party was in power. If we follow that idea as closely as we can, we are going to be able to do some good work. I look forward to what we can achieve over the next four years.
That said, there has been some discussion, and I understand there is agreement that we should strike a steering committee, as we have in the past. The steering committee would consist of a non-voting chair and two vice-chairs, as well as a member from the NDP and an extra member from the government, meaning there would be five members on the committee. There would be a non-voting chair and four members: two representatives from the government side and one each from the two opposition parties.
Could I have a motion that a steering committee be struck?
Go ahead, Mr. Trost.