Thank you, Chair.
Our plate is quickly going to fill, as I think members are beginning to see, and we'll be overwhelmed. Managing our time is one of the most stressful and difficult things for us to work out. The government House leader asked this committee if we could come to agreement on as many standing order changes as possible, to get those in the system and in place as quickly as possible, so that we could live under those new rules. It would make sense to me, although I would certainly be willing to listen to other thoughts, that this has the most time-sensitive nature to it in terms of changes. I for one am willing to support the aggressive agenda for changes, because I think those changes, if they live up to the words, will be good. That's why I'm prepared to move things out of the way and get at it.
Just as a cautionary note before I shut down, this is not nearly as easy as the minister led to believe. We spent—I see David over there smiling, because he remembers when we went through this—probably the better part of a calendar year just on what we were calling the “low-lying fruit”. In other words, it was the issues where we all agreed. It wasn't that complex. It wasn't controversial. If there was any controversy or disagreement, we set it aside and said, “Okay, that's not part of the low-lying fruit.” Everything got shovelled over there. It was all we could do to come up with a limited number of very minor changes.
I'm not overly optimistic that we can do it as quickly as the minister might like, but it seems to me that if they're serious—and I take them at their word that they're asking for our input as to how to approach this work—then beginning on the Standing Orders would be a good place, in light of the time sensitivity and the amount of time it takes even to just find the ones that we all agree on.
Before I relinquish the floor, Chair, I did raise this quickly in my little stream of consciousness with the minister, but I am serious. One of the things we used as a working tool when we were looking for what we called the low-lying fruit.... By the way, that report was issued, it did go through, and it was adopted by the House. They weren't big deals, but we did have the agreement that if anybody at the table, any of the caucuses, disagreed, it wasn't going forward.
I did ask the minister, although I didn't really expect he could answer it or would want to given the time available, but I put the question to you, Chair. I'd like to hear from the government. If we get into a crunch, and we're very likely to, on rule changes, how will the decision be made? At the end of the day, is it just majority rules and that's it—too bad, so sad? Alternatively, will we say, “No, if we can't reach unanimous agreement, we won't put forward changes to the rules”? Because all it will do is recreate a partisan fight in the House over rule changes that are meant to be non-partisan.
I would just leave that with you, Chair. Thank you.