Thank you for that question, Mr. Lukiwski.
When it comes to mechanics, I'm not hard-wired or married to any particular suggestions, but I'll deal with some of the questions I had from colleagues in the corridors.
First of all, with regard to majority or minority situations, I am not suggesting in my motion that those who would be eligible for committee chairs would change. In my suggestion, if you have 24 committee chairs, you would still have 20 chairs drawn from the government and four from the opposition.
Interestingly, colleagues, that was the first question I got from the government side: in a minority situation, could the opposition elect all the chairs? I got the same question from opposition members literally the same day: would not the government, then, elect the chairs for our four members?
I'm not suggesting the eligibility criteria change for the 20 positions; the government would still be chosen. The opposition would still be chosen for the four positions.
I envision that sometime very soon after the Speaker of the House of Commons was elected, members would be presented with some form of a preferential ballot, or a series of ballots, if that's preferable, with the respective committees listed on it. They could mark their preferred choices for committee chairs on these ballots.
Of course, deadlines would be established for members to put forward their names. I don't think the system we currently have for Speaker, whereby people withdraw their names, would be wise for this, but members would put forward their names.
Somewhere here in the House of Commons, one of the committee rooms perhaps, members would cast their ballots for their respective committee chairs throughout the day. The clerks would then do the count, and at that point the results would be known. That would be a fairly simple mechanism. I think most of us would be fairly comfortable with that, since most party nominations, when there are more than two candidates, tend to run with a ballot system like that.
I noted there would be an issue of what to do when a committee chair needs to be removed. I think there are different answers for this. The principle I'm trying to establish is that the committee is responsible to the entire House. Committees are made up of ratios similar to those of parties, so there would be some continuity if we remove the vote on electing and repealing from the broader House.
If you're going to repeal the election of a chair or remove the chair, I would suggest that a vote would first have to go through committee. Then it would be presented to the entire House, with both the mover and the committee chair being challenged, then an opportunity to present their case, with very short time limits. The House would vote, possibly through a secret ballot, not in the House with a standing vote or anything, because we don't want committee business to interfere with other House business. I think that would be the most practical suggestion.
Mr. Lukiwski, do you have a question on any other particular technical matter?