Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think what's being overlooked here.... It's almost, Mr. Chairman, the story about the emperor who has no clothes. What happens—and we see it happen all too often—is that independent members of Parliament are allowed to hold up report stage with hundreds, sometimes more, quite frankly frivolous and redundant amendments that would never have a chance of getting passed by any measure through the House, and often don't even get support from the opposition parties themselves.
So let's be clear. This for the first time allows independent members of Parliament to appear at committee to present their motion, to present their amendments, and to present arguments on behalf of those amendments for, as the chair said, up to a minute or two minutes. That is more than fair. I think it corrects an imbalance, and it allows report stage, after the committee has done its work, to proceed in a reasonable fashion.
The other point that needs to be made is that if the opposition members are extremely concerned about making sure that all independent members of Parliament are heard at committee, they have every right to open up one of their seats for any independent member of Parliament to present at committee. It's not up to the government to do that; it's government legislation. It's up to the opposition to do that.
So there are a number of ways to bring this forward.