Mr. Chair, when I asked to speak just now, I knew what I was going to speak about. But I have to tell you that, given the way the meeting is going, I frankly no longer have any idea what I want to say. I apologize, but I still have some comments to make.
First of all, Mr. Chair, the amendment that you accepted, is barely in order, in my view. It is the same as the previous one, with the number of minutes changed. Nevertheless, you accepted it.
What I find most ironic is to hear government members telling the committee to speak up more. I personally do everything in my power to limit my remarks, so that we do not waste time and so that the committee ends up accomplishing something. I find the irony hard to believe.
We can always debate for the sake of debate, but I am not used to that. My training did not teach me to debate just for the pleasure of hearing the sound of my own voice. I am not a lawyer, I am an architect and a university professor. As a professor, I know that you have to make your point quickly because, after three minutes, students are not listening any more and no longer understand what you are saying. It has to be the same for other people too.
People have talked about the democratic principle. Personally, I look at what happens in the House of Commons, where not everyone speaks. Every member from every party does not have to be on their feet for ten minutes talking about a bill. Anyway, the ten minutes is to speak to a bill, which is a bigger subject than speaking to a clause for five minutes. It is also the case that the people who speak are the ones chosen to do so. Why would we not do the same thing in committee?
By the way, no one ever said that each member would have to speak, even for a minute. We just have to pick the best spokesperson, and he or she can speak for five minutes.
So one person from each party would speak for five minutes. We never mentioned dividing up the time. Imagine if we did that in the House. It would mean that, with every member getting one minute to speak, everything would take 368 minutes. It doesn't work like that. I just point out that is no less democratic in the House. Here, each party has five minutes to express their point of view. That is both democratic and fair.
We are pushing very hard so that, hopefully, we can think about democracy in a new way that has nothing to do with British parliamentary tradition. It's always about British parliamentary tradition, it seems to me. Let's drop the democracy argument, let's stop saying that it is undemocratic if each member of the committee does not have a set time to speak. It works like that in the House, let's do the same in committee.