Okay. I will try to honour tradition as opposed to making up for everybody else.
Some things being suggested I think are utopian. I want to spend a minute on reading speeches. I know that's not part of the proposal.
Tonight is the night of my private member's motion. I've been waiting for almost four years. It's very exciting. And I have 15 minutes to talk about why January 29 should be a national day of solidarity with victims of anti-religious violence.
I happen to have my speaking notes here, which I will be reading word for word. You will notice there's a little 9 and a little 10. That indicates it takes me a minute to get from there to there. I have it timed so it's exactly long enough. If I don't use a script, I won't get all the information I packed in there. I can't do it extemporaneously, even though I am a big fan of extemporaneous talk when available. I even have little notes here because it turns out that when I redid it I forgot to edit some material and my numbers were off and I've got to go back and... I'm not going to keep on adjusting, partly because I read more slowly in French than in English.
A mechanistic application of the no-reading rule would have some consequences that I don't think those who advocate it had in mind. That's a concern to me.
I know S.O. 31s didn't originate here; they originated with Scott, but I think we've identified a real problem.
Right now as I understand it, the theory, which has been abused, is that whoever catches the Speaker's eye will give an S.O. 31, but it has come to be divided up fairly among the parties, and the parties have used it to assign to us. I only know my own party, but I think every party has adopted a process of saying the last couple are reserved for party business, and the rest are on some kind of rotation. I just checked with my staff. I am up on our rotation for an S.O. 31 on the Tuesday after next.
I think the only way we could make sure the S.O.31s are 100% about private members' business would be to make it a formal rotation; private members' bills are a lottery. You get put in there, and then after that you go through it. It's systematized that way in the Standing Orders.
Now that I've thought it through, your instigation to try putting that in I think is not a bad idea. It would resolve the problem. I think the reason my side puts in partisan attacks, and your side puts in partisan attacks and the NDP does too in all fairness is we're in an arms race with each other. If you create a situation where we're all disarmed, I think the problem would go away and return to its original purpose.
I wanted to get that one on the record.