Mr. Stanton, all partisanship aside, I'm a fan. Thank you very much. I enjoyed your article when it first appeared in Canadian Parliamentary Review, I think it was.
I've been following this issue and looking into it further in other jurisdictions, much like you have. During my time, I'm going to do two things: I'm going to ask you questions, but I'm also going to give myself the opportunity to vent my spleen on many of these issues.
I say that because I am absolutely envious of many of the things I've heard in witness testimony about Westminster, the clerk there, and what I've read from Australia. I've seen how they have made strides well advanced of what they were back then, both in Australia and England, but also in New Zealand, and how they've managed to do that with a great deal of maturity.
As a matter of fact, if I may be so bold, sometimes they debate the way their House operates in such a mature fashion that it makes us look like a stationary clown car where reasoned debate goes madly off in different directions. That is most disappointing, because we had an episode last year that was absolutely disgraceful, and I think we should all be blamed for that.
I saw it 10 years ago. I saw it 10 months ago. I think ideas like yours get lost, because I don't know if we're mature enough to deal with them yet. That's my view. That's 15 years of my spleen vented.