Thank you.
I have a small proposal to make on this. I noticed that the routine motions that have been circulated are not precisely the same as the routine motions that were adopted by the health committee in the first and last session of the last Parliament. There's a subtle difference here that I wanted to point out to my colleagues and I'd like to make a suggestion.
In the routine motions adopted by the health committee in the last Parliament, it said that witnesses be given up to 10 minutes—it said 10 minutes, but five minutes is okay—for their opening statement at the discretion of the chair. Then it went [Technical difficulty—Editor] during the questioning of witnesses that six minutes be allocated for the first questioner, etc., and it went forward. You can see that the qualifier of “the discretion of the chair” was over the witnesses' amount of time.
If you look at the proposal before the committee today, that's been moved. The discretion of the chair now is modifying the six minutes for each party. I don't know if that was done on purpose, but I certainly don't think the chair should have the discretion to give six minutes or less in a first order of questioning, or, in fact, over the time.
I would propose that we either move the words “at the discretion of the chair” back to where it should be—which is over the witnesses' amount of time—or just strike it completely, so that we know that witnesses are given up to five minutes. The questioners get up to six minutes in the first round and then they get their five and two and a half, etc.
I would point out that where the discretion has been exercised is generally in the second round. If witnesses go over or if we have had a point of order or something, sometimes in the second round we don't have the full time, so the chair would sometimes ask if it was okay if each party got three minutes or something and we would give that approval or not by unanimous consent. That always worked very well. I believe that's the proper way to handle that issue. It's not to give the chair the discretion as to whether or not we get six minutes or five minutes, etc.
I hope I'm not terribly unclear. That would be my suggestion.