I very much love the enthusiasm and the hopes of being able to stay focused, and I would never suggest that politicians are long-winded.
I will caution that this seven minutes blows by. You are also assuming witnesses are brief and want to be brief. Sometimes you will have what they call a “hostile witness” who is seeking to burn out your time. It sounds as though we're quibbling over a small thing—it's a minute one way or the other, but you'd be amazed.
This will happen within the first few months. One of us will look up as the chair says “Thank you; that's your time” and be completely stunned that whatever it was, the five, six, or seven minutes allocated, is gone. You didn't get to two-thirds of the things you had hoped to explore, and that was your shot. You have to imagine the environment commissioner being here with six chapters, five chapters, and a whole bunch of things your constituents want to know about.
In some concession to Mr. Fast, I think we should take a proposal. He's suggested it. I wonder if he'd considered the benevolence we had when the Liberals were in this place.
To Mr. Bossio's point, even when the Conservatives were in the place, there is always a lessening of the government's allocation in terms of seat proportionality to time proportionality. That's a general given; otherwise...well, there are reasons for it.
I think the proposal was the first round is seven minutes, which gives us four rounds of seven for 28 minutes. The second round was all five. Is that correct, Ed?