Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In the spirit of collaboration.... It's funny how this comes up for discussion every time but ends up reverting back to the way it was.
From my past experience on the committee, in a lot of cases when witnesses come in they will each take an hour, typically. So getting through this is sometimes a challenge, and getting all members to be able to actively participate also ends up being a challenge. You have to do all these gymnastics around splitting time. And I'm okay with doing some of that as well.
What I'd like to do is this. I'm not necessarily averse to Mr. Stoffer's proposal, to his increase in minutes to properly reflect the representation in the House. That's fine. But I think when it comes to the second rounds, I would like to see an opportunity before we go to each party a second time.... If that means we have to adjust the time accordingly, we can, but for future rounds I would like to see us make sure that all members have had a chance to question the witness prior to our going to a second round for some. I would like to see a situation whereby we continue that first round as we do, and then we would go to the Liberals, the Conservatives, then the Bloc, then the Conservatives. Then we might end up with a couple of Conservative questioners in a row, and then we could go back to the full rotation if we had a round of time after that.
So my amendment is that if there is a subsequent round, the rotation alternate between opposition and government members until all members have had the opportunity to question the witnesses, and all questioning will be for a period of five minutes.