I'm going to take advantage of the perceived lull in debate here.
You'll notice that at the beginning of this motion it contains the words “at the discretion of the Chair”. This particular chair would take that as a huge commission to edit or massage these rules, because as written this motion is very precise, and in my experience as a chair, it's perhaps a little too precise. I've sat on both sides, government and opposition, and I recall times being in government where the routine was such that you had government members pretty much going to waste while the opposition took time slots. Eventually there evolved this alternating piece so that instead of doing the round, opposition, opposition, opposition, government, and continuing that, there was opposition, opposition, government, opposition, and then alternating back and forth so that everybody on the committee had a reasonable opportunity to participate instead of having some members being left and abandoned until 12:59 or whenever the meeting ended. As a chair, I would try to prevent that from happening.
However, this matter is in your hands, so I'm going to see members here. Which one of you would like to go first?
Mr. Warkentin.