Mr. Chairman, with regard to the operation and accountability of all standing committees, I think our committee took into consideration the Chairs' Liaison Committee, Caucus and everybody who was involved in our discussions. Because we have so many committees, Caucuses and special committees Members were worn too thin. We've noticed that a number of Members weren't participating effectively because they were sitting on a number of either standing committees, special committees or various Caucuses that we had. We had noted that and we looked at the number of sitting days, and the number of committee meetings we had and the workload.

Members are currently spending an average of 47 per cent of their work day in meetings. It's making it more and more difficult. What our committee has indicated is we talked about maybe downsizing a committee membership so that by downsizing it, the Members, through their selection, would indicate their interests.

We're not suggesting that this take place during the 12th Assembly. Currently, we have seven Members with three alternates and so forth. We're not suggesting that we're going to change it in this Assembly. We're recommending that the 13th Assembly will have the new rules in place where the standing committees would all be downsized to five members.

I understand what my colleague from Deh Cho is saying. What this motion I put forward says is that the next Assembly, rather than having seven Members, will have five. The quorum is going to be four and we're going to have three alternates. That will come into force at the 13th Assembly, not during this current 12th Assembly.

The other issues in relation to the operation and accountability of committees would reflect some into our current Assembly. We broke them up in this manner so that we can deal with them because we wanted to deal with some of the items now. In terms of chairmanship, we wanted to deal with it now and give the authority to the chairs and also the committee. So we broke it up in that manner.

But the specific recommendation that we're considering now is being proposed for the 13th Assembly. Thank you.