My understanding is that, generally, on parliamentary committees if there is unanimous consent to move away from routine proceedings, it is done on a meeting-by-meeting, case-by-case situation. The chair would test whether or not the committee.... If there are two panels in the same meeting, instead of two 10-minute periods, the chair and the clerk may offer advice to the committee that they take seven minutes or seven and a half minutes. If there is only one person that the committee wants to hear from, they may suggest to the committee that they want 15 minutes.
I have never experienced that as a problem in committees. Generally it's at the discretion of the chair and the clerk and generally there is just nodding, or nodding off, of the committee members as they make that decision. I have never seen that as difficult.
In the routine motions, we set the rounds. We're attempting in this motion to say that the government party takes 33% of the time. The Conservative Party, the official opposition, gets 33% of the time, and the NDP and the Bloc each get 17% of the time.
The government is showing generosity in allowing more time for the opposition than for the government side and that is the routine proceeding. When we get into meeting by meeting, case by case, then we trust the chair and the clerk to advise our committee and we will agree or not agree, but that is at the discretion of the chair.