Let me just point out, Mr. Chair, that although I know we followed this practice in the past, it has occurred to me in the past as we folllowed this practice that it certainly doesn't meet some of our objectives. It doesn't necessarily allow every member of the governing party to have a shot at it, and if you compare the amount of time in a normal two-hour meeting that any one member of either the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party has compared with Mr. Stoffer, as the only representative of the NDP, and if they have a five-minute opportunity in every round and Mr. Stoffer takes that five-minute opportunity, which he normally does, he might well have 15 minutes in a meeting when some of our members might not have any.
As well, of course, if you look at the percentages compared with representation in the House—which I think is one of the goals we try to approximate, at least—this approach, with the amount of time both the Bloc and the NDP get, is nowhere near the representation in the House.
I think we should open it up for reconsideration. I know many other committees take a different approach to this in order to address some of these concerns I have raised.