Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I support this amendment to the motion, although again I don't know whether I would support the motion as amended. There's still the issue of allocating time, but we'll speak to that later.
It seems to me that this amendment would at least bring the debate somewhat into line with the way things happen in the House of Commons. Even when time allocation is brought in place in the House of Commons, I believe the normal speaking rotations apply. From my memory and knowledge, that's the case.
The speaking allocations in the House in fact are based on the number of members per party in the House, so they roughly reflect the per member presence in the House. Yet without this amendment, we'd have something quite different here at committee. All of a sudden you would have at committee a situation where each party is treated as equal.
Again on this proposed amendment, I just wonder how the Bloc members or the Liberal members could go back to their constituents and say that they agreed to a motion that would give the three of them the same speaking time as one member of the New Democratic Party, and three in the case of the Liberal Party, especially on an issue as important as an environmental issue. I think they'd have a hard time explaining that to their constituents.
When they're considering whether or not to support this amendment, I think they should really consider that and reflect upon how they may or may not be able to defend their actions here to their constituents. I really think they ought to take some time and think about that.
Certainly, if I were to go to my constituents at election time and say that when it came to this important environmental discussion, I agreed to a motion that gave me maybe one-sixth the speaking time of the NDP member, my constituents would be very unhappy about it. It's something that in good conscience I couldn't support and that in good conscience my constituents would question me on. I really wonder whether I'd be their MP if I were to support this kind of position.
Now the members across are laughing--some of them, not all. I don't want to reflect.... They know that issues dealt with at committee quite often never get back to our constituents, but even if that were the case, I still think they should really reflect on the fairness of this and how they would explain it should it get back to their constituents.
Mr. Chair, I would just say that I support this amendment, but I'd still have the same problem I had with the last amendment. I still don't see how I could support the motion even if it were amended in this fashion. I'll certainly consider it. I'll listen to the debate on this amendment and reach a conclusion after I hear the debate.