Thank you, but in all seriousness, Mr. Chair, one of the things that is key to the success of Parliament is that we try as best we can to work with each other informally in order to, in a sense, provide the lubrication between the gears that all grind together here to produce the legislation and the oversight for which we're responsible. There are a variety of informal mechanisms we've set up for that, which are based, ultimately, on our trust and respect for each other, notwithstanding the fact that ultimately the nature of what we're doing as policy objectives puts us in perpetual conflict.
But it's not a war of all against all. It is a respectful attempt by all of us to achieve policy objectives when we differ on all of the specifics that come before us--that is the nature of it--but not on the generalities. That's why you have the concept of, for example, the loyal opposition. The opposition is loyal to the constitution, loyal to the Queen, loyal to the idea of the state, loyal to the institution of Parliament, but ultimately not loyal to the government, because it seeks to be an alternative government.
That concept includes not merely the government and the official opposition, but also all of the opposition parties. One of the institutions we use is informal House leaders meetings. These are meetings that take place between the House leaders, the whips, and the deputy House leaders every Tuesday. Although not all the individuals who are here go to these meetings, I think a majority of them, or at least half of the individuals here, do go to these meetings. We agree to conduct ourselves in a certain manner, a manner that I would describe as “gentlemanly”. Although there are no formal rules about contempt of Parliament for talking about what goes on in these in camera meetings, it would be conventionally be understood to be contempt for the process to mention publicly what goes on privately in those meetings. In my remarks I will be respectful of that convention.
It's also important to understand that the undertakings given at those meetings have to be taken seriously. If we agree to undertake a certain process in those meetings, including a process for negotiating some potential change to the Standing Orders, then that undertaking should be honoured. If it isn't, ultimately the utility of that institution--the utility of the weekly House leaders meetings designed to facilitate cooperation and to find the areas where we aren't in conflict in order to move forward--is lost.
As you can probably guess, what I'm working up to here, Mr. Chair, is the suggestion that in essence a version of that seems to have taken place today. It is a version of--and I'm trying to use gentle language here--neglecting the undertaking to be gentlemanly in our conduct with each other, to be respectful of the process and of the fact that we were expecting to use that process to resolve this issue. It has been lost by taking this particular motion and bringing it to this group without notice. We had witnesses here, of course, and an expectation that we'd be dealing with other items of business. Now we're saying that we're going to use this process.
There is no formal violation of any rule--that would be easy to stop, actually, because the rules are the rules--but there's a violation of the conventions that help us to work together.
One of the interesting things about the way our institution is structured after a thousand years of evolution here and in England--