There actually is some similarity, which I will come back to in a moment, in the comments. I'm not entirely sure that having brought up a point in the 39th Parliament invalidates raising a similar theme in the 40th Parliament. Our rules don't, as far as I can tell, preclude that possibility. If they did, it would lead to very interesting debates. We would eventually run out of all relevant arguments and only be able to use the irrelevant ones that nobody had thought of previously, because the relevant ones had been previously engaged in and were therefore impermissible.
I'm going to come back to that point. Let me first talk about what I was saying.
There is an underlying way in which we conduct ourselves when we find that the informalities that allow us to get business done break down. There are two ways of handling this.
You can say that the default position of Parliament is to simply say, when we can't agree, that we shut down debate and have a vote and move on, or the default position could be that when we can't agree and can't find ways of facilitating moving things along through unanimous consent—with which, as you know, you can do anything here—or through a demonstration of widespread consent, we slow the process down. There are many ways in which this applies. Obviously nothing can happen without a majority, but we also have ways of ensuing that if a meaningful minority disagrees with something, they can act in a certain way.
If a meaningful minority of the committee—not a majority of the committee; I think it's four members, though it may be five—don't agree with the chair's decision not to call a meeting within a certain time that they deem reasonable, they can sign a letter and effectively force a meeting to take place. That's an example of a way in which we ensure that more debate can happen.
In the House, if the Speaker asks us to call out the “yeas” and “nays” and determines that the “yeas“ have it and five of the people who are supporters of the “nay“ side believe that the Speaker is incorrect in that interpretation, they can stand up. They call it a “standing five.” That's a way of giving power to a minority to slow the process down and allow for more debate.
This is taken to the point that by convention, when dealing with tied votes, the Speaker always breaks a tie in such a way as to ensure that further debate can continue. It's not written down, but it's a very strong convention, and the Speaker has made reference to it. At third reading, that means voting against the measure in question so that it can be sent back and the process can start all over again, because if you voted in favour, it would pass from us on to the other place.
In the case of a second reading vote—