Proceedings of the Standing Committee on
Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament
Issue 12 - Evidence, June 23, 2009
OTTAWA, Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament met this day at 9:37 a.m. to study on the Senate committee system as established under rule 86, taking into consideration the size, mandate and quorum of each committee; the total number of committees; and available human and financial resources.
Senator Donald H. Oliver (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: As honourable senators know, we have held a number of meetings to date on the subject of the study of our committees. The committee has met seven times on this subject prior to today's meeting. We have heard from committee chairs, deputy chairs, former committee chairs, former government leaders, the Principal Clerk of the Committees Directorate and the Assistant Parliamentary Librarian. In addition, we have received 49 replies from honourable senators to our questionnaire on the committee system.
After today's meeting, I fully expect that we will not meet again as a committee until after the Senate returns from its summer adjournment. I have no particular secret information to that effect, but I can read the tea leaves as well as the rest of you, and we hope something might happen today.
Our analysts from the Library of Parliament will synthesize the information we have heard, and they will develop a background package on the testimony received, as well as a draft model of how the committee study might take shape for the consideration of the steering committee before it is brought back to the main committee.
In addition, the working group on the revision of the rules has met and agreed on a timetable and division of work. The group should produce useful results in time for renewed consideration by this committee when the Senate returns in September.
We have been busy. Our committee has met 19 times since it was organized. The committee has produced four substantive reports on the reinstatement of bills, the process for questions of privilege, a question of privilege and on rules to adapt changes in the Conflict of Interest Code for senators to our rules of procedure. We have been productive and I thank everyone on this committee for all their hard work and support on the various initiatives of this committee.
Today, honourable senators, we have the pleasure of hearing from one of our own committee members, Honourable Senator Andreychuk, who wishes to address us on issues related to the study of the committee system. Her remarks will be based on her perspective as Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights.
Senator Andreychuk, you have the floor.
Senator Joyal: I do not want to interrupt, Senator Andreychuk.
I raise the point, Mr. Chair, because you have introduced accurately the number of reports that this committee has sent to the house, and I have seen those reports on the Orders of the Day for a certain time now.
The Chair: I spoke to two of the reports last week and I intend to speak to another today.
Senator Joyal: That is my suggestion. As a member of this committee, I am eager to see those reports proceed in the house, as are all the other honourable senators on the committee. I would appreciate it if you could do as much as you can so that we can have the benefit of a vote in the house on those reports.
The Chair: I said I spoke to two reports last week, and I did. One of them concerned privilege, which was raised by the Leader of the Opposition, Senator Cowan. Someone took the adjournment. Do you know if the opposition will speak to that matter today?
Senator Fraser: I plan to speak briefly to that matter today, chair.
The Chair: Do you think that might come to a vote?
Senator Fraser: The more of these reports that can come to a vote and move on, the better. Some of them we have been sitting for some Parliaments now.
Senator Joyal: That is essentially why I do not want those reports to stay there. If there is prorogation or dissolution in the early fall, we will lose that work and we will have to start all over again.
The Chair: Welcome, Senator Andreychuk. We are delighted that you have agreed to give us the benefit of your views, from your experience as chair. You now have the floor. As you know, after you have finished, there will be questions from honourable senators.
Hon. A. Raynell Andreychuk, Senate of Canada: Thank you, honourable senators.
Mr. Chair, you indicated that perhaps my reflections will come from chairing the Human Rights Committee, and they will. However, throughout the course of 16 years, I have been chair, deputy chair and an ordinary member of many committees, so it is from those perspectives that I want to deal.
I will not touch upon all the points I am concerned about in committees or on which I may have some perspectives, because I am on the committee and I can share those as we go along. There were a number of points, when you asked me to present, that have troubled me from day one.
In coming into the Senate and being on committees, the overall issue has always been, what are the rules that govern committees so that we can have equal access to them and understanding of them? By that, I mean the fairness of the rules. We can be told that a committee starts, it has certain resources and can do its work. We look at the mandate of the committee and we go about that work.
However, in the years that I have been here, I have found that it has been difficult whether through the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration or, in the past, there were other ways to achieve fairness of the distribution of resources, particularly with regard to studies and the resources available for the committees across a broad stream. It took some time to understand that first-in usually received the best hearing. One did not know when to go to Internal Economy and what the boundaries of one's requests might be.
Over the years, I think we have perfected that process. We have a better process now through Internal Economy. However, the issue of fairness of resources still gives me concern, whether it is the number of clerks, the number of researchers or the number of dollars made available to a committee. It still seems to me to be more of an art than a process of rules upon which we can base our requests.
Anything that this committee can do to shore up what currently exists, and what appears to be going in the right direction, will be helpful. In a committee, comments will come up about wanting to conduct studies. Members may put forward an idea that is wonderful, but it will take a lot of travel, resources and time. As a chair, I wonder if I ask for everything that the committee wants whether it will be fair to other committees.
I go through that process, because I am mindful of the fact that we do not have unlimited resources. Despite hearing one senator some years ago say that if senators work, they should be given the money to do that work, I do not think that is the way we operate. We have a finite number of resources, and we should be sure that we staff committees and give them resources, with some sense of fairness among the committees.
That has been my constant concern, when I see other budgets: Is it fair, and is the committee careful not to ask for everything? We can put through elaborate plans that make a compelling case for resources, but are they at the expense of other committees? In other words, that concern for fairness still preoccupies me. It is difficult to translate to committee members what is fair and how much we can ask for.
The Chair: Do you have any specific recommendations that you want to make on that issue? What changes to the rules do you want to see to take away your fear of unfairness?
Senator Andreychuk: One thing I thought helped a lot was that the budgets all needed to be submitted at a particular time. Committees contemplated what they could reasonably accomplish within the year, then budgets were submitted and there was a process to assess them. I trust that, in that process, we weigh all the committees and take into account not only whether the committee can manage the work but whether budgets are fair, one committee to the other.
The Chair: Is that not a decision that the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration takes when they receive the budget from your committee, and all the other committees? They know how much money they have for committees. Is that not the kind of analysis they go through in Internal Economy?
Senator Andreychuk: I think that when we submit the budget for particular studies, that process is happening. I still do not know, after all these years, why certain committees have more than one clerk. I heard in this committee for the first time that the Chief Clerk of the Committees Directorate makes the case to Internal Economy that a particular committee be given two clerks. I had no idea that was happening. I was told that we are given either half a clerk or a clerk, depending on the committee workload.
There are still mysterious ways that resources reach committees. If I knew, for example, that two clerks were available to manage the work of my committee, I think we would probably have more on our plate, and manage the work differently. If I knew the range of dollars at my disposal for my committee, I could then gear the studies to that range.
We are heading in the right direction, but I am not yet certain that we have all the pieces in place. Contract workers and assignments are being worked on.
I am not here to be critical. I am here to suggest that we are on the right path but that we need to do more work to solidify some of those issues so that the process is more transparent to all of us, when we come into the system; what the rules are and how we go about seeking a fair apportionment of resources for a committee that we are in charge of.
The Chair: Senator Furey is the chair of Internal Economy, and he is here. Senator Furey, I will hold all questions until the honourable senator makes her points, and you are first on the list.
Senator Furey: That is fine.
Senator Andreychuk: One other comment that we make about our committee structure is that we have the ability to study issues in a way similar to royal commissions and that, therefore, we are much more efficient with resources.
I have spent time thinking about whether our studies are as neutral as those of a royal commission. I do not think they are in all cases, nor should they be. I wonder why we continue to use that kind of language, and compare ourselves to royal commissions.
Our studies are often much more pointed. We may start out with a particular point of view. We are not vested with neutrality. We come with our experiences, and we often sit in clusters representing particular parties. We are not here as party members, but we are associated with parties. When we conduct our studies, they are valuable, but when we start saying that we are absolutely neutral in our studies, we lose something about our studies, and perhaps our fact base is not correct.
I will talk about studies that I have worked on, so I will not point to any other committee. We have said we want Canada to comply more with the international human rights legislation. We conduct a study to determine how we can accomplish that goal. We are not a royal commission and we do not presume to be, yet, we often say we are neutral when we conduct studies. Perhaps on a study like euthanasia we were.
We should not try to compare ourselves and the cost efficiency. We should build our case and bring it down to what our role is here. The essence of our role is political, and it is to scrutinize legislation. If we build our studies in conformity to that role, we will be on surer ground.
Another issue that has troubled me is that we have had bits and pieces of a debate on how to evaluate our work. One senator has testified as to whether our studies have value, based on issues with which perhaps I do not believe. For example, the number of times we are in the newspaper is not a way to judge our worth. We are here in a policy discussion, and I judge my work sometimes based on whether I have been able persistently and consistently to change policy attitudes or policy objectives in the government that we have been critiquing.
Sometimes the quiet method is better than the public method. Our reports, studies and decisions sometimes are not geared to a public discourse in the same way. We should not look for a one-size-fits-all evaluation. Our studies should be evaluated according to our objectives at the start of our studies.
Some of our studies are not the kinds that induce the public to become involved, and some are. In some studies, we are ahead of the curve in trying to create a public awareness on issues. Sometimes, we use public means to do so, and sometimes we use academics. The fact that we file some reports, and certain segments of a society read them, has the same effect as if we had a public debate with the press. I have concerns about that type of report.
In another more practical area, I hope this committee deals with the subcommittee we have set up on observations. Our chief function here is to scrutinize legislation; to pass it, reject it or amend it. We curiously started adding this issue of observations. From my investigations into the first observations that I came to, and they may not be the first observations made, observations were tacked on when committees did not want to amend a bill but had concerns about its implementation, the fullness of the legislation or its unintended consequences. By consensus, the committee said; yes, we believe the bill has merit and we will pass it, but we want to alert the government and others to observations.
In more recent years, I have seen observations used when amendments would have been more appropriate. Is this the road we want to take? Is this a proper use of observations?
More recently, it crystallized with me around the Federal Accountability Act when the observations were put forward from one side of the chamber in great detail, and it made it difficult for the minority opinion to be included because we do not recognize minority reports. It was a majority report. We were told we could amend it, but when any effort was made to amend it, we realized it was not amendable in the sense we wanted to amend it. A point of view was being put forward. I have seen a few of those examples.
Observations do not form part of the report they are attached to, as I understand it. The practice is a curiosity that has grown up in the Senate. It may have value or it may not, but the rules as to what observations are, the value they have and how they fit into our system have evolved, but the practice is not recognized. It is time that we look at them and determine what observations mean and for what purposes they are used. In fact, I introduced a motion some parliaments back to look at observations.
Regarding a more recent practical issue, I recall that earlier in my life in the Senate, when we conducted studies, and we only tabled studies that, perhaps, were more controversial, when we knew we could not reach consensus on the floor. We reached consensus in the committee but not on the floor, so we tabled those reports. More recently, we are moving to adopt reports and obtain reactions from the government. It seems to me the public does not understand the difference.
If a report is accepted only in a committee, but not by the Senate, it takes on a life in the public as a Senate report. We differentiate among certain reports, and we should. Yet for the public, no matter what we do in committee, those reports are somehow translated over time to be reports of the Senate, not reports of the committee, or even reports of the majority of the committee. It gives me concern when I have to defend opinions of the Senate, which, in fact, are not opinions of the Senate.
In other areas, I concur with other senators that have been in this chair, so I will not go over those areas, but I will answer questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much for those comments. The library researcher has handed me a note saying that in terms of Senate reports, lawyers, academics and judges use Senate and House of Commons studies and reports to understand the intent of legislation. Senator Baker made this point in the chamber a few days ago. The intent of the legislation may have been forgotten after a time. These reports have been used by academics, lawyers and judges to go back to the original intent of the legislation. They can be used to help elucidate.
I have been the chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, and the Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and Rights of Parliament. In my 19 years here, I do not think that I have ever felt that I did not receive enough money from Internal Economy to carry out our studies. The Agriculture Committee conducted studies across Canada on several occasions and in Europe, and the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance was given money to conduct studies and travel. I did not have the problem that you spent the first quarter of your remarks describing. I do not know how other senators feel but that has not been my experience.
Senator Furey: Thank you, Senator Andreychuk. I am happy that you raised this issue of, as you called it, fairness in distribution of resources. The area is troubling, especially since we have limited resources. Some chairs, as you indicated, are better than others when it comes to making requests. I believe our subcommittee process with Senator Robichaud has made fantastic strides in trying to fix or alleviate some of the problems associated with that issue, sometimes at the expense of their own popularity. At the end of the day, chairs that come with the largest requests are usually the ones that are cut the deepest.
Given your experience with the vast number of committees you have been involved in over the last 16 years, some of which you have chaired, have you ever found that you have been hindered or hampered in any work as a result of lack of funding or lack of resources?
Senator Andreychuk: The simple answer is yes. The process now of having a subcommittee scrutinize the budget is good compared to the process when I first came to the Senate. That process was much more difficult to understand. I know that now a subcommittee scrutinizes these budgets. That is why I am trying to reinforce that the rules be known before committees submit their budgets. I am thinking of things like the support staff given to committees, the ability to have subcommittees and the way the committee manages its work. If committees knew the rules, they could extend the amount of work. One does not always know where this evolution comes from. Sometimes it comes from the ingenuity of one chair or another.
In my own work method, I respect the fact that we are using taxpayers' dollars and that those dollars are not unlimited. Taxpayers want us to do good work, but that does not mean that we define our own credibility in that sense. We must be mindful of the times we live in. If we are in an economic recession, we must be part of the process and say that we will not have the kinds of budget increases that we might have at another times. I think we reflect the communities' will in Canada. I am always mindful in how I use dollars that they are not unlimited, so that other committees have the same chance to use those resources. When we hear that $1 million is available for committees, I strategically ask how much of that funding would be for, say, the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, bearing in mind that valuable work is undertaken by other committees.
In one of our committees this year or last, when we made our presentations to the subcommittee, they were generous in their comments back, saying that our committee came with a bare bones budget, and that we were not padding it. They could not find any padding, and they were reasonably certain that we were asking for what was reasonable, not what was anticipatory and so on.
I am not saying that my work approach is the only way to work; I am saying that we all bring our own ways of working to the table. The more the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration can set the rules, the better it is for the committees to understand how to approach the budget process.
Senator Furey: Is it fair to say from your comments that the work you undertake or, rather, the work you do not undertake, is more a result of your strategic planning and concern about the budgetary process and our limited resources than it is a committee or subcommittee not giving you the money or the resources to complete the work you asked to complete? There is a big difference here.
Senator Andreychuk: I think it is both. We have, in the past — not in the last year or so — asked for resources and been asked to wait until the next year to put in our proposals, and delay or defer travel. We have had a good working relationship in that regard.
Senator Furey: One problem in the past, Senator Andreychuk, and I am sure you are aware of this problem, especially in the past few years where we have had minority parliaments, is that the subcommittee makes recommendations to the full committee usually on a partial business. A committee that comes looking for a huge amount of money will not be given the whole amount but will be given the money in a number of different tranches, because of possible dissolution, prorogation and everything else that happens, as we have seen in the last number of years. We generally ending up not spending the full allocation for committees. I am surprised to hear that you have not received resources that you asked for, particularly in the last number of years.
That being said, with respect to the process, do you think it would be better, when committees receive their mandate for their particular work or studies in the chamber, that we have a full debate on the costs of that work at that time, as opposed to waiting to receive the mandate and then obtain the money?
Senator Andreychuk: I am glad you asked that question. In any other environment, you put forward a proposal and you put forward the cost of that proposal so that those who make the final decision, which is those in the chamber, have the information before them. It has always been curious to me that we can go in and say, we want to study whatever, and then budget for that study later. Usually, in any environment I have been in, whether nongovernment, government or business, the two must come together: Here is what I want to do; here is what it will cost; and here is the time we think we will take. We do not take that approach here, however.
From the 16 years that I have been here, I have found that we have moved at least to understand that approach. We have said that we put forward a concept and the Senate agrees to it, but we still must justify the money that goes with that concept. That process forces committees to think about the meaning of the words, I will study human sexual exploitation, because the committee then must start costing out the study. We have moved towards that approach, but bringing the two together before a final decision would be better.
Senator Nolin: The discussion between Senator Furey and Senator Andreychuk is key to what we are doing.
You mentioned using the chamber to look into not only the principle of the subject or study but also the financial parameters of such a study.
Do you think the chamber is the appropriate body for that, or should there be a new body in the Senate? We currently have the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration looking after the administrative and financial components of the work. Do you think another body should look at the policy content of what a committee wants to do, or should the chamber have that role?
Senator Andreychuk: I was not thinking of someone looking at it that specifically. We have a committee. Most committees are composed of 12 members, and two committees are composed of 9 members. I think committees can determine their own work program. I do not want to take that role away from a committee. I do not want the chamber to tell committees what to study and what their budget will be. I want to be assured that someone has thought through the entire process of subject matter and funding before agreeing to the work.
Senator Nolin: That is my question. Who is that "someone?"
Senator Andreychuk: They must know what a study will cost before agreeing to undertake it.
Senator Nolin: I accept the ballpark principle. However, not all committees will be ready at the same time to present their work plans and a ballpark estimate of how much that work will cost. We cannot ask that everyone prepare their estimates at the same time.
Is there an individual or group of colleagues who would listen on an ongoing basis to requests and ballpark estimates of cost and then report to the chamber on those requests and estimates? Is the alternative to maintain the unfortunate responsibility that Senator Robichaud and two others have on their shoulders? That is not a fun responsibility, but someone needs to do it. I remember that Senator Furey once performed that role.
Do we keep that system, or do you want a larger body of peers to decide? I do not see the chamber, despite all good intentions, able to perform that function. We will probably agree to all requests and then send it to Senator Robichaud and ask him to fix it.
I am in favour of what you recommend, but I am trying to understand how the mechanics will work.
Senator Andreychuk: I have not put my mind to a new mechanism. I was looking to perfect the existing mechanism.
In my case, our committee will decide that it wants to study a broad area. The orders and mandates are broad, and we have no idea where they will end up. We then go to a committee to request funding. I believe that the committee should have determined the expense before asking for a mandate, and that the chamber should not scrutinize our budget. We should have the pieces together to propose our study. We currently propose the mandate and budget separately. We ask for the mandate we want and then go elsewhere for the funding.
The chamber needs to know that the two have been married. I do not think there should be debate on that mandate and funding in the chamber. There should be a process that leads to a final decision in the chamber.
Senator Nolin: I have a comment on your reflection on royal commissions. I find that comparison useful in terms of best cost value for a report.
I have here in mind Senator Keon's two reports with Senator Kirby prepared at the same time as Roy Romanow conducted a royal commission on the same subject. I am sure Canadians were well served by the Senate report, and I do not want to think about comparing the cost of the two reports.
The Chair: The royal commission report cost $15.2 million.
Senator Nolin: That is useful to know.
In terms of the quality of work, when we are able to leave partisan thinking at the door, we become effective. When we let partisanship infiltrate the reports, we become useless.
Senator Andreychuk: Some of our studies are like royal commissions; many are not. I think we go too far in saying our studies are like royal commissions. We need to broaden our debate about what our studies are, because we have varied types of studies for varied purposes. We do not want to find ourselves in a Catch22 of always being compared to a royal commission study, because that is not always how we work.
Senator Nolin: Usually when we work that way we are better; that is why.
Senator Andreychuk: Yes, there may be those cases.
Senator Fraser: I was Senator Andreychuk's deputy chair at one time and can confirm that in the past, her committee has been refused resources to perform necessary work. Her memory does not fail her on this subject, unless we have a joint delusion here, and that is unlikely.
I find it weird that some committees have two clerks and some committees have half a clerk. I think Senator Andreychuk is absolutely right that there are committees whose work is determined consciously by the decision of the committee and, in some cases, only by the nature of things; that is, by the amount of clerking time available to the committee.
A committee cannot ask one clerk, or half a clerk, to do the impossible, so committees try not to give themselves a mandate that will require more than one clerk, or half a clerk, can physically accomplish. If one can simply decide to take on more work than one clerk can humanly, physically handle and, therefore, be given two clerks, something is askew in our system.
I have always thought that it would be a good idea to have budgets attached to orders of reference when the Senate looks at them, but I have a couple of sub-questions on this item.
First, how much latitude do you think should be built into such budgets when a committee chair brings a proposal to the Senate for approval? I repeat, "to the Senate," not to Internal Economy. I think the number would have to be preliminary, but how can we control it?
Second, do you share my abiding concern about the practice of some committees seeking from the Senate an order of reference that is so sweeping that the committee can then tell Internal Economy what it has decided to do within the sweeping order of reference?
Some orders of reference parrot the mandate of the committee that is already in the rules. I take, for example and that is because the book is open at this page the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. According to the rules, the committee is supposed to study matters relating to foreign and Commonwealth relations generally, including treaties and international agreements, external trade, foreign aid, territorial and offshore matters. The committee already has the mandate to study those matters.
For the sake of argument, a chair of Foreign Affairs comes to the Senate seeking an order of reference to study foreign and Commonwealth relations generally, and so on. Having won that approval, the chair goes back to the committee and says: We can study anything; we can study relations with the planet Mars. Having been authorized to study anything we wish, we will now plan to study whatever; everything from Australia to Greenland.
The chair will go to the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration and say: We have a mandate to study this subject, and we want to study it.
Do you think that situation is a significant problem?
Senator Andreychuk: In answer to Senator Nolin and you, I think it would be difficult to try to limit globally in the Senate what a committee wants to study. Committees are supposed to take on their study and pursue that study. If their mandate is too broad, they will need a plan of action that will limit them in some way.
Senator Fraser: Should that plan of action be brought to the Senate, rather than the Senate blindly voting to say: Go away; you never need come back to us again?
Senator Andreychuk: That is one way. The other way is, if the committee says it wants to study human trafficking, and it is not sure where it wants to go on the topic, then the limitation, in many cases, is money in other environments and in other parliaments. The committee can study the matter within a time frame with these dollars. Then, the committee can choose what it wants to accomplish or where it wants to go with the topic. There must be some limitation on those broad, general terms.
Even with the best of intentions, committees become wrapped up in the study and it seems to become bigger and bigger, because one constituency asks the committee to take on more and more. I think it is good process to in some way to curtail that tendency; limit it by money or a plan of action. The committee should let the Senate know exactly what it will study; not the details but more, as you say, the framework that the committee knows. I remember when we passed omnibus orders of reference.
Senator Fraser: We are still passing them.
Senator Andreychuk: Yes; thankfully, we have a subcommittee that somewhat curtails the money for those orders of reference. In some cases, committees have curtailed themselves by saying that they will develop a first tranche of the study and see where that process leads them. They have selfdefined their broad mandate.
That is all part of a problem. We must be crisper in how we work, rather than wander, which has been the case in the past. We are becoming better at what we do, but we still have a ways to go.
Senator Fraser: If, to have an order of reference approved to conduct a certain study, the committee must attach at least a bestestimate budget, the committee would have to submit the estimate, presumably, by a certain deadline; otherwise, there is not much point, if what we are trying to accomplish is to make everyone aware of how scarce resources are allocated.
How can you build in room for emergency, unplanned work that might involve significant resources through the year, after the Senate has already looked at the global requests?
Senator Andreychuk: There are a number of ways. You can set money aside for that situation, as many large departments, universities and colleges do. There is the contingency fund. You determine within your scope whether the holdback is 10 per cent, or what have you.
The other way is how I think the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration has been approaching it. They say: You will receive your first six months or funding, or whatever, and then we will revisit your efficiency.
There are ways of approaching that situation. I am not the expert to tell you how to approach it. I find it curious that this is the first environment in which I have worked where the rules are not known. I want my colleagues to have more information about the committee that I am working on. I do not want them to pass, as they did yesterday, the human exploitation study, and that is all they know about it.
I hope that somehow on the floor of the Senate, senators will have more information about what we want to study, how much it will cost and how much time it will take. Maybe I want a report filed along with a request. That report makes me go through that exercise. It does not mean that terms cannot be changed, and increased or lessened with the exigencies that we have here, but it would be better for all senators to know more about what we will study.
Also, areas of study could be complementary from committee to committee so that we can work more collegially between the committees. If we want to talk about rural poverty, studies can be undertaken in the Social Affairs, Agriculture or Human Rights committees, and maybe we can build on the work that other committees are involved in.
Senator Keon: Thank you, Senator Andreychuk, for sharing your philosophy. I hear a lot of your philosophy because I sit beside you.
Senator Andreychuk: And vice versa.
Senator Keon: I will wander on a bit and then I want you to comment.
I think we must come out of this exercise with improvements to the rules for the committees, to follow on from what Senator Fraser said, and improvements in the structure and function of the committees. The committees can be realigned to function better; there is no question about it.
I suspect that is the object of your exercise, Mr. Chair, and I hope we achieve that.
When it comes to committees that deal with legislation, I think there can be a better distribution. I frequently look at bills that go to the same committee, one after the other, and I think that this bill could be handled by another committee, perhaps. However, it seems that bills usually find their way to the same committee.
When it comes to special studies and I have been involved in many of them I have found something totally different in my previous life, that everything is retrospective. We haul in witnesses and we listen to them about this and that of what has gone on, but there is never anything creative.
I had the privilege in my life of serving on the InterAmerican Council of Science and Medicine for a number of years. I had the even greater privilege of serving on the Horizons subcommittee, which is the most interesting thing I have done in my life, second only to building an artificial heart. I used to come home from these meetings with notes, and that was my strategic plan for the next year of what I would invest in, what areas we would pursue in the labs, what kind of clinical staff we would hire, and so on. One comes out of the meetings with a vision of how the universe will unfold.
Let me come to the point. In Canada, all our policy is dictated by our political leaders, and they are bright people; we have two bright people at the present time. However, they are constrained by their polsters and policy people in all of this policy. Their number one preoccupation, no matter who they are, is how to win the next election, not what is the best thing for Canada and its role in the universe. They do a good job, considering their constraints, but the Senate has no such constraints.
Would it not be interesting to have some kind of an alignment of people in the Senate that simply sit down and ask: How will the Canadian universe unfold; and what can we do to make things better scientifically, socially, financially and politically? The answers do not have to agree with any political party or political philosophy. The question would be only, what is the best future for our country? Then, roll out the topic for anyone that wants to consider it or reject it.
There is a challenge for you, Senator Andreychuk.
Senator Andreychuk: I am still pondering your point about making a heart. I was in the business of where the hearts were broken, not in making them.
I agree with you on two points, namely, that we sometimes traditionally send legislation to the same committees, and some of the laws now can be studied in other committees as well as they can with the expertise in a particular committee.
Frankly, I have sat on the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs for the past 15 years, and when the electoral type of acts came, I thought that almost any committee could handle them because so many senators have been through the political process. They understood what a change of constituencies means, and so forth. The legislation did not always need the expertise of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. I agree with you that we can rethink where we send them, and we go through that exercise from time to time.
Regarding studies, that is why I hope change happens, and it might be Senator Nolin's idea to have the chairs sit down and justify the kind of study they are planning and why. Is the study only reactive to what seems to be happening around the government, or can we have more visionary studies. Hopefully, your study will resonate that way.
I am still on the point that there should be a more cohesive way to approach the studies, so we know exactly what we are studying and how much it will cost. There should be more understanding in the Senate and we should all go through a similar process to reach the end, rather than finding it by evolution.
Senator Keon: I want to reinforce Senator Carstairs' point. Committees should not be allowed to take on six or seven studies at the same time; that is absurd. I have been caught in that situation in the last couple of years. Sometimes the witnesses do not even know what study they are appearing for. That point should be in the rules.
Senator Andreychuk: I agree with you. When an order is too global, committees are almost forced by their constituency to study everything. If they had a narrower mandate, they probably could be efficient and move on to the next mandate. Some committee mandates are too broad.
Regarding the other issue from Senator Carstairs, in the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, we monitor many ongoing issues. We see that as a role. No one monitors, for example, the Canadian Human Rights Commission or the Public Service Commission on equity issues. We have those roles as continuing orders at the same time, but they are not intense special studies. The orders involve monitoring and playing that role. The Official Languages Committee operates that way as well. Committees can have more than one reference on that basis.
The Chair: Last week, Senator Murray said he hoped there was a way to monitor more closely the many officers of Parliament as well.
Senator Fraser said earlier that this role is much like a conversation, and she is right.
Senator Keon, you made a suggestion that it will be good if we can come out of this study with improvements, and you are putting a visionary approach on some of the work and the reports produced by committees. It will be useful to our study. The suggestion you made was wonderful, namely, to look at whether the Senate and the Senate committees are and should be public policy leaders in Canada. That is the wonderful part of your suggestion.
Senator Brown: Senator Andreychuk, I want to understand better who the targets of the Senate studies are.
I have read newspaper articles about one Senate committee that publishes some of its work, and I have read, clause by clause, reports of committees I have been on. I have read the final conclusion of a report.
I assume that one of the targets is members of the Senate itself in that we hope senators will act in some way. For example, they might propose legislation or some kind of policy from the study.
Of course, members of the other place are important if senators hope to pass legislation, ultimately.
Then, of course, the last target is the Canadian public.
Are those, in your opinion, all the targets? Should we target all those groups with every Senate study?
Senator Andreychuk: Inevitably, they touch everyone; I do not know if committees target groups.
Often, our studies are directed to the government. One role, for example, of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade is to analyze and assess the foreign policy of Canada and to make recommendations. We often bring our work down to these questions, if we are studying something: What is the Canadian foreign policy statement today; do we think it is adequate; and how can it be changed?
We target better policies in the national interest, but by doing that, obviously, the house has a role, the public has a role and everyone else can enter into the debate with us and shape our opinions about what policy could be.
Occasionally, we may target something other than public policy. We may want to bring to the public an issue that we know of.
Also, we conduct studies that are perhaps too hot for the other side, when the vested interests are already known. The Senate does not have to go out there in the same way that the house does, so the Senate can study such issues and ensure the public is aware of them. We have done that. Many of them are social issues.
It could be any one of those studies.
Senator Brown: I am interested in how we might improve contact with the people of the other place. I conducted a poll of all members from all parties, asking how many of them have read a Senate study in the last five years. I was disappointed in the results. The maximum response we received from all members of the house was that 25 out of the entire house, in five years, read at least one report.
We should try to find a way to generate more interest from the other place, if that is one of the main targets. I assumed when I came here that the house was probably the main target. To reach the Canadian public requires massive expense and a massive campaign. It is easy to reach all the members of the Senate. All we have to do is make a copy for everyone and ask them to read it. However, that is not true with other place.
Senator Joyal: Thank you, Senator Andreychuk, for your comments. I want to come back to a point in your opening remarks about taking into account our constitutional duty. We are a legislative chamber. The priorities of committees and the priorities for money should be initiatives linked to the legislative duty of senators and initiatives to keep the government accountable. In the initiatives to keep the government accountable, I include reports from the Officers of Parliament and the Crown agencies. Before a study is approved, in my opinion, the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration should look at the role of the committee in relation to legislation and the other functions linked to our constitutional duty, unless there is an exceptional social situation that commands that a study be undertaken for X, Y, Z reasons. It seems to me that, in many instances, legislation has received the cold shoulder treatment in favour of studies. If we are to have a report, we should include a set of principles and priorities.
The Chair: That is a good point.
Senator Joyal: I am not opposed to studies. I think the Senate has a role in studies. However, if we look into the overall activities of the Senate, I have the impression, and I might be wrong, that there is an imbalance in the system, as you said in terms of your own committee. When did your committee last review the activities of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and its annual report? When did the committee last review the other reports of Officers of Parliament, using the human resources and expertise assembled in that committee to tackle those issues?
I see studies on the Order Paper adopted in the Senate; a report of a committee on this, and a report of a committee on that. Some of those studies have had a good reception; I am thinking of Senator Nolin's study on drugs. It was reprinted three or four times.
Senator Nolin: Twice.
Senator Joyal: It was considered a reference. However, many other studies that we undertake seem to be shelved. I am not against the idea of shelving a study, but it might not be the best decision for the Senate to invest its time, energy, money and human resources into something like that study. That is one approach that we should take.
I will put everything on the table, and you can deal with what you want. Another point I am puzzled about, and I feel is important, is the observations we append to some reports. I agree with you that the present rules are yes, no or amendment, but I have found those observations useful for the members who remain faithful in serving the same committee.
From one bill to the other, those observations are useful. I myself resort to them often, remembering that on a certain bill we made certain comments, and those comments suggested that the government take this measure or that measure. We should take that use into account. I am not of the opinion that we should discard observations spontaneously, because they seem to me to be linked fundamentally to our legislative duty of understanding the implications of a bill. I agree with you that there have been instances — I remember serving on the committee on Bill C-2 — where the outcomes might not have been satisfactory, but on the whole, there are important elements in those observations when the Senate does not want to send the bill back to the other place that will be helpful down the road in future debates or on other issues that will be brought to the Senate floor. Maybe you can refine your approach to the observations. Maybe we should develop a format so that we make better use of them. At first sight, I think they are useful.
My final point is about the money. Everything starts in mystics, but it ends up in politics and who pays for it at the end. As much as the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration has a transparent format for evaluating the requests, there would be no criticism or frustration in relation to their decisions if the criteria are well known or the scale of evaluation of a request is well known, to ensure that the money available is properly directed to where the priorities should be, in relation again to the fundamental role of the institution.
Senator Andreychuk: Thank you, Senator Joyal. One of my difficulties in coming here today is that I am part of this committee, and I do not want to preempt the discussion. I hope to generate some issues but not to come to the final decision.
In the last decade, we have received more pointed criticism of the Senate and the Senate's role. Living in Saskatchewan, I am mindful of that criticism. We have often justified ourselves by referencing our role of studies. I think you are absolutely right. The essence of what we do here is in relation to legislation, and maybe we should pay more attention to justifying our value and our need as part of the democratic, constitutional process. How we do that, though, is the trick. We say that legislation trumps all studies, but in some cases, we want to continue our studies and fit in the legislation. We need to remember what we are about.
I agree with your comment on observations, if we are to have observations, but we should know how observations fit into our rules. We have had Speaker's rulings on observations. We should review those rulings and determine why and how observations can be used. It is unfair if the observations put forward a different point of view, in my opinion, or if we avoid a true amendment because of whatever negotiations have taken place. We should perform our job and make the hard decisions on whether to amend or not, and not be able to use the fudge factor of observations.
The Chair: That role would be easier if senators were not appointed but elected.
Senator Andreychuk: Perhaps. Time will tell.
What troubled me about observations when they were used when I first came to the Senate was that if there was no consensus in the committee, there were no observations. We seem to have switched to an approach where, if the majority of members agree, there can be observations.
I am saying, tell me in the rules what observations are. We need to look at the Speaker's rulings on those observations and determine their status.
In the same way, to go into a slightly different issue, we do not have in the reports an ability to write a minority report. The house is geared to writing majority/minority reports. What is our inclination here on minority reports for studies? That issue is a whole different area that I was not planning to touch but I have raised it.
Senator Furey: Senator Andreychuk, when I said earlier that I was surprised that, on occasion, you did not receive all the resources that were required for your work, I hope my comment did not sound like I was questioning the truthfulness of that statement. I was not, in any way, shape or form. I do not think, to use Senator Fraser's words, that you or Senator Fraser is delusional by stating that.
When I said "surprised," I perhaps should have said I was surprised and disappointed to hear it, especially in the last number of years where, because of minority parliaments, we have not maximized the budget for our committees.
Would it help if chairs of committees were asked to attend full Internal Economy Committee meetings when the full committee received the recommendations from the subcommittee on their particular budgets?
Senator Andreychuk: I think it could be helpful. I am not the expert on that matter. I think it is a question of how the Internal Economy Committee functions. I thought one of the best rules put in place was that someone cannot be chair of a committee and sit on the committee that will assess the budgets of committees. That rule was valuable from a perception point of view. A feeling of a fair process is to have it transparent and have it perceived as fair.
I did not ever think that anyone on the committee 15 years ago was consciously saying a committee cannot have the money. With the rules, if someone arrived here in November, there was no money left. Why did they not arrive until November? Our committee was not set up or we were finishing a study. If was not through anyone's difficult or bad behaviour. I am talking about not fixing the rules in such a way that committees all arrive at the same place at the same time.
In the same way, one issue I did not touch, which does not touch the Internal Economy Committee, is sitting on Monday for two committees. I have made my case known here as a member of the committee and now I will do it as a witness.
We made a conscious decision to have a human rights committee. We, as senators and the Canadian public, value human rights. It comes up in every political speech in one form or another. The whole issue of human rights is something that preoccupies young people in Canada. Canada has been a leader in human rights. We in the Senate had the first Human Rights Committee that looked at both national and international issues, not only one or the other. The world now sees human rights that way; we are all interrelated.
At the time the committee was set up, based on resources, time and everything, we could have the committee but we could sit only on Monday.
It is unfair for those members who are dedicated to that area to start out on a Sunday for the Monday meeting, and to say that the committee has to make do with all these things. Is it any better or worse than any of our other committees?
Now I understand the roles of the whips. We have our slot on Monday and they will not move it. However, it should not be historic precedence that determines when our committees sit. All our committees should be looked at as being of the same value. I suggested maybe rotation or something.
In the same approach, why should one committee have two clerks and the other one have one? Why should some have contracts and capabilities that others do not have? Whatever the rules, I have always been of the opinion that we be told what the rules are because I respect the consensus of the Senate.
The Chair: Senator Nolin has a supplementary question.
Senator Andreychuk: I want everyone to be able to access resources in a fair way.
Senator Nolin: You mentioned the whips' role in deciding what committee uses which timeslot. Should the whips keep that responsibility or should we ask that a body of someone's peers to decide on subject, ballpark figure, and time slots when the committee sits?
Senator Andreychuk: I am not able to answer that because if you totally revise the way we operate the Senate
Senator Nolin: I am asking you why two individuals with two political agendas, at least perceived political agendas, would have that final decision? Do we want to keep that approach?
Senator Andreychuk: I want to keep it at the moment, unless we totally revise the system because I know that so much of what we do in the Senate comes from a balance of the two parties. We now have given some room and space for independents. Parties have an obligation to meet with the independents, and they do, and I believe that approach has been working well.
There must be an arbitrator. If our system is based on the negotiations of two leaderships, and the whips have the assignment role, it is not the whip who says the committee sits in those slots. Whips have provided the ultimate stamp. They have to administer the decision. I do not think the question is one of whips or not; they only administer decisions as long as we have this system. If we change the system, perhaps the administrators would be different, too. I have no problem with the whips telling me that I sit from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and any change has to come
Senator Nolin: You want a fair arbitrator.
Senator Andreychuk: I want a fair arbitrator and at the moment, there seems to be this precedent that because other committees were struck first, they have certain slots, and because we added two more committees and then a third committee, a committee sits on Monday and that committee is stuck there forever, which means that committee is never the same committee as the other committees.
I do not think that is what we intended when we agreed to the Human Rights Committee. I will speak only for the one I know. Nor do I think the value of the committee to the Senate is as an adjunct. Human Rights is an essential committee.
It is unfair, or unrealistic to expect people, however committed they are, to come every Monday, knowing the size of Canada. The house sits, they say, five days. We then sit a minimum of five days, if not six, if we are on this kind of committee.
Senator Fraser: I will go back a bit but I will make a quick observation on this point before I go back. I suspect that the Monday slot was tied up intimately with the initial understanding that these three committees will not study legislation. I remember being told that these three committees would not study legislation. I know that they study legislation sometimes, but in comparison to other committees, not often.
If Senator Joyal's point is accurate, and I believe it is, that our primary function is to study legislation in committees, then the primary slots for committees should go to committees that spend a fair amount of time studying legislation.
I have served on the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights and the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages. I am not in any way denigrating the importance of the work of those committees. On the contrary, both causes are close to my heart, but some of that dynamic may be at work there.
Going back to the matter of budgets and Internal Economy, when Senator Furey asked if it would be interesting to have chairs present when the full committee considered their budgets, a tree of things immediately began to grow from the little acorn in my mind.
I think I heard you say that you did not think chairs should be part of Internal Economy. If I am right about what you said, I assume that the chairs of other committees would attend Internal Economy as guests or observers, but not as voting members of Internal.
Second, what would you think of having Internal, at the beginning and at the end of its budgetary process, meeting with all the chairs together to set out how much money is available and what the rules are so that everyone operates on the same understanding? At the end, there could be a meeting of the same people to set out how the money was divvied up and why.
Is that approach feasible, or would it only lead to cat fights?
Senator Andreychuk: I think Senator Furey should answer this question rather than me.
Senator Fraser: You have been around a long time.
Senator Andreychuk: I think it would be helpful if the Internal Economy Committee met with the chairs to discuss how they will approach budgeting, and to share information in a more formal way.
Most of the information we receive is through clerks, and it would be better if we received it from the committee. I do not say that chairs should not be on the Internal Economy Committee, but they should not be included in the budget process. Again, it is not that I distrust them; it is the perception. Yes, there should be more sharing of information.
In all the time that we were asking for a Human Rights Committee, it was never suggested that we would not study legislation. The questions at the time were with regard to the extent to which the Human Rights committee study questions that at that time went to the Legal Committee, because there is overlap there. The point was that we would be conscious of the fact that the Legal Committee already existed, but that Human Rights would not be excluded.
The Chair: Senator Furey, when you were out, Senator Fraser asked the witness whether she thought that Internal Economy should meet with all the chairs of Senate committees at the beginning and at the end. She said that at the beginning, they could set out frankly their budget for the year, their expectations and how Internal Economy would evaluate it, as a way of letting chairs know what the committee's position would be. That is what we were discussing while you were out.
Senator Andreychuk, you raised many interesting questions. Before I turn to Senator Robichaud, you really caught my ear when you talked about how we evaluate our work. I have never served on Internal Economy, but I know that a number of senators on the committee have asked business questions like whether we receive value for the money we spend for committee studies.
I started thinking about university professors who teach and publish. Peer groups analyze and evaluate their work. In think tanks, there are ways to have work evaluated. I have worked with the Conference Board and know that their reports are all evaluated before they are made public. Evaluating the work of groups is not something new, but it is not something that the Senate has undertaken formally.
Do you think that committee studies, other than on government legislation, should be evaluated? Some are better than others, so should there be some kind of peer group that looks at the studies, analyzes them and critiques them? Should there be some kind of a sanction?
Senator Andreychuk: Definitely, there should be no sanction. I do not know what that would be. It does not flow.
I think we should continue to remind ourselves the extent to which our work is worth something to the public, and I use "public" in a broad sense to include everyone.
I do not subscribe to "value for money." I do not think it fits a democratic institution. We conduct studies for all kinds of reasons. I think we should justify what we think we are bringing to the table.
The Chair: We are talking about taxpayers' dollars.
Senator Andreychuk: Yes, which is why I think we need effective analysis of what we are doing and why we are doing it, but I do not think that value for money applies here.
The Chair: There is a new mood of transparency and accountability, and Canadians are looking to government and parliamentarians for that, too. One way of being transparent and accountable is by showing value for how taxpayers' dollar are spent.
Senator Andreychuk: That may be. I am saying that I think this is a unique institution. Our role should be ideas, vision, debate and education. I do not understand what people mean by "value for money." I do not understand what they mean by that term. Perhaps you can define it for me within the context of a democratic association. I cannot.
The Chair: The Auditor General defines it, and many government departments work on the basis of that concept.
Senator Andreychuk: Yes, but we are not administering programs; we are not in charge of delivering programs. That is the difference. If I were to deliver daycare services, I can understand value for money. How do you determine value for money for a report on euthanasia, for example? Is it determined by the number of people who received a copy of the report, or the number of hits on a blog? I am not sure how to do evaluate it. That is not my area of expertise.
The Chair: I am glad you raised the point because it started me thinking about it.
Senator Andreychuk: This point has been raised by other senators, and before we put ourselves in the position of having an auditor looking the studies, we should determine what value for money could mean. It would need to have a different meaning for me.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: We have talked about a lot of things, namely, what we should change. We might want to take a closer look at the tools available to us to evaluate what we are doing.
We talked about orders of reference. They are submitted for consideration by the Senate. There was a good example of this late yesterday evening, and the same goes for the others. An order of reference was proposed, and there were no questions. The reason is simple: we have a limited amount of time.
To a certain extent, we are limited to a three-day week, and as a result, committees, which hold meetings on Mondays, have fewer senators than they would like because there are fewer senators who want to sit on Mondays.
You mentioned available resources. I think that all the resources are available to all the committees insofar as the committees request those resources, and the requests are evaluated based on need, in terms of both financial and human resources.
I admit that some committee chairs have an easier time asking for resources than others, and they usually get what they ask for.
As for knowing how the amounts are distributed, the request comes before the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, and then it goes to the subcommittee. I have to say that the subcommittee has three members. We all have the same responsibility. Whenever possible, we reach decisions by consensus. And we consider requests based on what is presented to us, and all presentations reflect the order of reference.
We cannot second-guess what the committee has decided. It is a vicious cycle. We must consider the requests that we receive and try to distribute the funds so as to ensure that all the committees can do their work. This is not always easy because committee requests come in at different times. Furthermore, some committees want to do their work in the first part of the session. When you consider that the funds distributed cover the period up to late October, for some committees, that accounts for all of their funding, but for others, it is only a portion of their funding.
I must say, however, that in the past few years, we have not had a lack of available funds. We have never spent all of the money allocated for committees. To say that there is not enough money and that resources are limited would be false, in my opinion. The funds are available.
When you talk about creating a reserve, that is difficult. There is always a reserve. When committees submit their budgets to us, those figures must reflect all committee members. But rarely do all senators take part when there is an activity, and any funds that are left over go back into the pot for redistribution.
How do we make the process better? I wish there were a magic solution. And I think that resources are used well, they are there, but I hope that through our report, we can shed light on how to review orders of reference, mandates, studies and the distribution of funds. But I do think that the system we have now works well. This was more of a comment than a question, Senator Andreychuk.
[English]
Senator Andreychuk: It is the old story. On Monday, we think that the committees work well. Given all the different perspectives of senators coming from varying regions, the up-and-down schedule of Parliament works well. On the other hand, can we make it better? Can we make it easier for senators to come in and out of the system? I am always mindful that I am asked by new senators, how do we do this in the Senate? It takes a while to know the rhythm in this place. The more transparent we are, the better. We need to look again at the rules.
Often, I find information accidentally. For example, in this committee, I found out the Chief Clerk of the Committees Directorate determines the requests to Internal Economy for additional clerks. I had been given answers such as: We have so many clerks, they have been apportioned and, sorry, but that is it. I thought that if I had any case, I would go to Internal Economy. I did not understand that it was the Chief Clerk of the Committees Directorate.
We put pressures on some of our systems unfairly in ways that we do not know. Perhaps we need clarification, or we can take the approach, as Senator Nolin said, of standing back and looking again at the whole process.
Coming back to Senator Oliver's point about value for money, I am not sure that is the right question. The right question is, are we maximizing resources for the benefit of Canadians? Have our reports had any meaning or changed anything?
I do not want an analysis that says, we sent out 1,000 reports and therefore we are good and we have done something valuable. Have I changed a policy? Have I influenced a debate? Have we disseminated information that could not have come from elsewhere? Have we performed due diligence on legislation? Have we given sufficient credibility to our institutions and our values as embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? There are many ways to talk about the value of the work here. Perhaps we have not enumerated those kinds of principles in a way that we can reflect upon.
My final point is that we have work in our own communities and then we come here. We are here for a limited period of time. It would be helpful if there was symmetry among the committees and how they operate, and that the rules were understood. It would be easier for all of us. I sometimes think that Internal Economy is faulted for things that are not of the committee's making but are the making of the entire Senate. That is why I say, a process that goes from the start of a committee to the end should be understood.
[Translation]
Senator Robichaud: As far as the work of the various committees is concerned, some committees attach a lot of importance to the number of media interviews, the number of website visitors or the number of people who have requested a committee report. It is rather hard to evaluate because there are some reports that have just as much value but that receive less media attention.
In fact, it depends on which unit of measurement we use to do the evaluation.
[English]
Senator Andreychuk: Agreed.
The Chair: Senator Andreychuk, on behalf of the committee, I thank you. I like Senator Fraser's words that today was more a conversation than a direct presentation by you with a number of your opinions. The conversation was important because it came at the good time in the work of our committee to have a philosophical overview on a number of important points such as the funding of committees, the fairness of the funding, the evaluation and so on. You raised those questions, and I thank you for that. This conversation today will be of great help to the researchers who must put some sort of structure on all these words that we have been hearing in these last eight meetings.
(The committee adjourned.)