Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2017

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

If I might ask, in the event this all gets resolved by that time, could we just go right back into the elections survey? We're a couple weeks behind on that. My sense was that the minister had given us a very realistic timeline as to what she would need. That would be a way of trying to get right back into it without having to resort to evening sittings or something.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

No one would disagree with that, would they? If we come to some resolution, we'll get a meeting as quickly as possible to go back to the Chief Electoral Officer's report.

They will put that in the minutes.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Maybe a parallel time continuum we could—

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

A parallel time continuum is the real trouble, because we could actually be suspending this meeting to have that meeting, except that it involves having two meetings of the same committee on different days. We're certainly able to suspend our disbelief enough to say that we're back in late March, but not that it's late March in the morning and then between 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock it's early April, and then we go back to late March again. That apparently is beyond what is permitted.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Does anyone know what time it actually is? This meeting started March 21.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I don't know, but I saw something interesting. Does everyone remember Y2K, or are you too young for that?

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I remember Y2K. I was already in tech by then.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I can believe that.

The question was what would happen to all these different systems when we got to December 31, 1999. A whole bunch of things didn't happen, but a few things were overlooked by the people who were fixing the bug. One of them was the bank security cameras.

I was living in Australia at the time. About January 7, they did this story on whatever happened to Y2K and what sort of things had actually gone wrong. They showed the date feed on this bank security camera, which said December 38, 1999.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Another concern with Y2K is a little-known fact, that anything that uses 32-bit integers to save time will wrap to 1902 on January 4, 2038. This is called the Y2K38 bug.

It's a little-known fact, but it's a real concern, because anybody who bought a legacy system up to maybe 10 years ago and is still using it at the end of the 2030s—which will happen, I guarantee you—will have this perverse problem. We're not finished with the Y2K bug quite yet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay, we need a little relevance here. We're out of order.

David, we all waited for you, so you are up now.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair. I thank my colleagues, I really do. That highway's changed somewhere, the road coming in, the parkway.

Thanks, I really do appreciate it. I've been in situations where this wouldn't happen. I won't say that I was always on the right side of how that unfolded, but I appreciate that.

If I can, to jump right in, I will say that this speaks to just the kind of culture we have. Even in the midst of all we're going through, there's still the ability for our colleagues to recognize on a human scale the dynamic of what we do. So thank you very much; I appreciate that element of fairness.

Chair, you'll recall that last night when we left off, one of the points I was making was to try to come to some sense of exactly what the government's up to so we can understand. I had said—and I won't dwell on it, but just to make the reference—that in the beginning, the best that I could surmise was that the government felt that, because it went the nuclear filibuster option the day before the budget, it thought, with all the media being focused on the budget—and, quite frankly, most of the country that was paying any attention to national politics was focusing on the budget. Of course, that always sucks up all the oxygen in the room. Our estimation is that with the government launching its 24-7 filibuster, which is its filibuster in that way, not ours, it thought that because we would get no attention for a couple of days, if necessary it could go into the weekend and it would exhaust us, and the media, when they did finally turn their attention to us, would perceive us to be obstructionist, and therefore we'd start to lose public support. And, of course, in a democracy, the highest power is the public. In this case, again, my sense is that the government hoped that public opinion would turn and that this filibuster would quietly die and go away and leave the road clear for the government to move in with its majority to change the rules at will.

Of course, it didn't happen that way. The first part did, and that was that nobody paid much attention to us downstairs in 112 north. Beavering away, we weren't getting a whole lot of attention. But that started to change once the lack of enthusiasm over the budget, or whatever enthusiasm there was, fizzled and nobody was talking much about the budget, except for maybe the things they pointed out that it didn't do, which seems to be getting more attention than some of the things the government rolled out that it was going to do.

As we headed into last weekend, we found ourselves with a real turning point. We had the government launch its sneak attack on the opposition on the Tuesday; we had the budget on Thursday; and we started to emerge on Thursday and Friday as people realized something else was going on here on the Hill besides the budget, and they looked over there. Another piece that was helpful was the government finally agreeing, to its credit—I give it its due—to take us out of that little corner meeting room downstairs in the basement, where nobody was paying much attention—you'd have to know we were there to find us—and move us up here into one of the two main beautiful committee rooms that we have. That also provides the television infrastructure, which gives Canadians themselves an opportunity to size up what's going on and to draw their own conclusions as to who's representing their interests here and who isn't.

I was pointing that out. That seemed to be the best that at least I could surmise as to why the government went down this road and took this enormous risk. And a huge risk it is, as you can see from where we are now as a result of things not going well for the government.

It took a risk, and it looks as if it's going to be potentially on the losing end of that.

But I will just say parenthetically that we talk about winners and losers. There are no winners here. There's nothing productive being done, unfortunately. Everything we're doing right now is an attempt by the opposition to use what rules we still have, while we still have them, to try to slow down the government, particularly when it's acting undemocratically and in a way that is certainly not consistent with the kind of promises it made and the kind of government it assured Canadians it was going to provide.

As we saw this unfold last week, the media, having finished with the budget, got some sense that, hey, there was something going on here, and followed up. A couple of stalwart media folk, journalists, whose passion is procedure and Parliament and how it functions, who love to get into the minutiae, into the weeds, as we do, had been following it and did a fantastic job. That's a pretty narrow band of the media when we're talking about something as big as public opinion being swayed one way or another on a filibuster, but that provided the groundwork for the rest of the media as they rightfully finished up their work on the budget and turned their attention elsewhere. They began to express their views as to how they saw things.

I think it's fair to say that the flurry of editorials and opinion pieces by opinion leaders in Canada didn't exactly break the way the government had hoped. That's recognizing that it's pretty easy to make these kinds of actions look as though they're obstructionist as opposed to based on a principle, and an important principle. You really need an egregious act on the part of the government, because opposition will throw up resistance. That's what we do. We're the loyal opposition; it's our job to throw up resistance. But not everything is a parliamentary battle and a hill worth dying on. If everything's number one, then nothing is number one.

Anyway, that led to those opinions starting to unfold. Believe me, that made a significant difference, as it does in a pluralistic democracy with free media. I'd like to just draw attention to some of those comments, given that the media play such a key role. By media, I mean in the broadest sense in terms of all social media now. It's not like in the old days when it was just print, radio, and TV, although I'm talking to Mr. Simms, who is far more of an expert on these things than I am in terms of the airwaves. So when I say media, I mean all the bloggers, the tweeters, the social media, and everybody who's paying attention. There are organizations like Samara and other organizations that are dedicated to this, that are picking up on it.

I stand to be corrected by any learned people like Mr. Reid—who I also want to give a special thank you to this morning, who stepped in as I got stuck in that traffic and made sure that my spot at the beginning of this meeting was preserved, and I thank him for that; he's such an honourable man—but to the best of my knowledge, I don't know, but it might even be old terminology. I find, with a lot of the things I say, that people in their twenties and thirties look at me as if I'm speaking Greek. It's the nature of the generational change.

These days, that divide just seems that much bigger than it ever was in terms of what they know and what we don't know, versus what I thought we knew when we were that age and the generation in front of us.

To the best of my knowledge, I think it's still fair to say that The Globe and Mail is the—what's the exact term?—national paper of record. At least that's the term I know. I'm looking for some learned people to give me a nod, one way or another. I'm sure it will get to me.

To the best of my knowledge, that is still the paper of record, meaning that if you wanted to look and see what was happening nationally and get an accurate reflection as a historian—what is it they say about newspapers, “writing history on the fly“ or “the first draft of history” or other such things...?

I thought I'd start with The Globe and Mail, the national paper of record. It's March 31, nice and fresh, within a week. It's headed up “Globe editorial: The dangers in a Liberal plan to 'fix' Parliament”. I'm quoting from the article now:

The opposition parties in Ottawa are in a panic over a proposal by the Trudeau government to change the rules of Parliament. What the government claims is an honest effort to bring “greater accountability, transparency, and relevance” to the House of Commons is, in the eyes of the opposition, totalitarianism run amok.

I wish I'd said exactly that. It's a great turn of phrase, “totalitarianism run amok”.

Think about it. It's The Globe and Mail talking about the Liberals, not some marginalized outfit that attacks everybody and everything and is always over the top—“totalitarianism run amok”. Now, they are saying that it's in the eyes of the opposition. It isn't seeing that, but nonetheless, just see the phrase there.

Let's go on. The very next paragraph has an interesting beginning. It says, “That's not an exaggeration.”

Once again:

What the government claims is an honest effort to bring “greater accountability, transparency, and relevance” to the House of Commons is, in the eyes of the opposition, totalitarianism run amok.

That's not an exaggeration. Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose last week unironically linked the proposed reforms to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's “admiration” for China's dictatorship and his “bizarre infatuation” with the late Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro.

Is Mr. Trudeau trying to turn Canada into a Communist autocracy?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Say it's not so.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Well, let's see what it says. My friend says, “Say it's not so”. Let's see what The Globe editorial has to say, a national paper of record. They think about these things. This is serious stuff.

If he is, going about it by changing some of the standing orders of the House of Commons is not exactly the sort of fiery revolutionary act one usually associates with these things.

But while we don’t endorse the opposition’s histrionics....

Fair enough. If anybody deserves that word, I deserve it, especially during this filibuster. So fair enough, fair enough, histrionics.

....we do share its cynicism regarding the government’s proposals.

That's a little bit of a smack on the opposition for some of the over-the-top stuff that some of our louder members of caucus tend to do, as we know, and it's self-evident, with lots of Hansard to prove the point. Okay, so we take our hit. I knew when I read this that we weren't going to come off completely politically clean here. How can that be? We're in the middle of a pitched political battle. I don't think history ever shows that one side was really entitled to sainthood and the other one was deemed to be considered evil throughout history. However, I'm willing to read the criticisms because it's fair criticism, but it's drilling down to the real issue. Remember, this is The Globe and Mail.

It says:

But while we don’t endorse the opposition’s histrionics, we do share its cynicism regarding the government’s proposals. Some of them are clearly designed to make life easier for a majority government. And that is unacceptable.

It's almost like.... Well, we'll leave that. We're not going to go down that road.

It continues:

Any majority government like Mr. Trudeau’s controls the House of Commons, which means it holds almost all the parliamentary marbles.

Of course, I would say parenthetically that politically they've lost their marbles because they don't seem to have a plan.

Bear in mind, Chair—and this has been raised before, not by us but by others—that we are already one of the most tightly controlled parliamentary systems in the Commonwealth. Already we're on the tighter side of government control in a parliamentary system, particularly in the face of an overwhelming majority, which, by the way, it managed to get through the unfair first-past-the-post system even though it had less than 40% of the vote. In fact, it got a lower percentage of the popular vote than the previous Harper government had.

By the way, they were the ones who were going to do something about that. What was it again? Oh, yeah, something to the effect that the federal election in 2015 would be the last federal election held in a first-past-the-post system. He got a lot of votes for that. As soon as it started getting tough doing real change, well, then, we're back to what we've seen historically. The Liberals love to run on the left and govern on the right—

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

We've heard this before.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

—and promise that they're going to have real change, get as many votes as they can for that particular issue, do their polling, and know it's a winner. Then when they get in power, they find some reason why they're not going to do it.

I know a little bit about full disclosure and not keeping a major promise. The government that I found myself in in 1990—I don't know why I'm doing this to myself, but I try to be as fair-minded as I can, even when it costs me. We didn't do public auto insurance. We had run for quite some time on public auto insurance. I won't get into the dynamics because the chair won't let me, and he'll know that I'm just eating up time, so I won't even try. However, I think it's fair to say that I have some experience with what happens to a majority government that takes one of its major planks and turns its back on it for whatever reason and however valid. Politics is not always fair. This government failed to learn the lesson of previous governments that ran on a platform of major change. This government is about to find out what happens when you promise people that you're.... Remember, it was “real change”. It wasn't just “change”, because that's what the NDP was saying: “We'll give you change.” With the Liberals, it was going to be “real change”. It's not really. It's pretty much what we've seen from Liberals in the past. How many times have they promised a national child care system? The only time we ever got close was in the dying days of a minority Liberal government as a last-gasp, desperate effort to stay in power. They cobbled something together. There were at least three, possibly four, platforms, starting with the infamous Red Book that promised a universal child care system. They didn't deliver it the first time, promised it again, didn't deliver it that time, promised it again, didn't deliver it that time, and promised it again. They finally formed a national majority government, and they still didn't bring it in. They did some stuff, and it's an improvement. There was a low bar considering where the Harper government had support for child care.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Point of order.

Just kidding.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You know, Chair, I keep giving these guys all this advice, and....

My extrapolation is that not long after we didn't follow up on that major platform promise, as I'm indicating to the government, guess what happened? We weren't the government anymore. That's what happened. I had to sit exactly where my friends are, except I couldn't even say I wasn't there; I was in the getaway car.

When the Cons of the day—Mike Harris' Cons, my first experience of that kind of change—

[An hon. member]

Hear, hear!

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, my friend would like that. There is a point at which you and I will honestly separate, and that's why democracy is so wonderful: to allow us to do that.

I had to learn. That's why I'm passing on this free.... I have the scars to show how I learned this. When the new government comes in, for the longest time you're going to be elbowed, you're going to be reminded, because it's the comparison that makes the case. Over time I learned to stop being so sensitive about it, certainly stopped defending every little attack, and stopped owning it. As people took their shots, I wished I'd had a BlackBerry then: it would have been easier to disappear into, but as I said, suddenly there were very important documents that needed very close attention, and that's all I looked at until it was done. I waited until it was done and then I came back.

That's how I got through it. I strongly urge my colleagues to do that in the Conservative caucus, especially those of you who weren't here. Every time you say something, you take a piece of ownership of it. Don't do that. You still have lots of room to take credit for the things you want to brag about that the previous government did and, when there's any criticism flying around, get your head down. There's nothing to gain in defending a majority government that just went down in flames. In this matter I know whereof I speak, truly.

We shall, then, continue.

while we don't endorse the opposition

I keep repeating that part. I keep doing that, and it's not good.

While we don't endorse the opposition's histrionics, we do share its cynicism regarding the government's proposals. Some of them are clearly designed to make life easier for a majority government. And that is unacceptable.

Keep in mind the changes they want to make.

We haven't reached the part where there's a reference to the fact that the changes they want to make, they want to make unilaterally.

Any majority government like Mr. Trudeau's controls the House of Commons, which means it holds almost all the parliamentary marbles. It can pass the bills it wants, and cut off debate when it suits it. It typically also uses its majority to control committees, further ensuring that little gets in the way of its legislative agenda.

Again, Chair, I harken back to the fact that in two instances this committee acquiesced to the request of the government that we focus on something that was important to it. We did so willingly. The first time—and again I won't go to great lengths, but you'll recall—the former government House leader, Dominic LeBlanc, came here and very respectfully laid out his case, laid out what his government was looking for and asked us to join in making it a priority, and spelled out some of the things they were hoping our committee could achieve.

Within days, we were doing that work, resulting in a report that we all supported, which went to the House. You, Chair, presented it to the House on our behalf. That was without the government having to use power once—nothing. It didn't even have to look askance. It didn't even have to hint that if we didn't do what it wanted, there was going to be trouble. There was none of that. I was there.

I've been on this committee in other parliaments. I know the difference, and I know you do, Chair. Normally when a majority government, a new government, especially when it's a big change, comes in, there is some recognition on the part of the opposition that it won the election. We get reminded of that only 60 seconds of every minute.

To hear some of the government members tell it, you would think our purpose in being here is just to disrupt everything they want to do. Yet I can point to consistent evidence that we have done exactly the opposite, that this committee has worked well together even to the point where we're in this pitched battle, and yet Mr. Reid and you and everybody else was doing what they could shuffling around, coughing, looking at their shoes, to give me an opportunity to get in from the traffic and get in my place. That's how much residual goodwill exists in this committee. Even in this kind of environment that decency is still there. It gives you just a little bit of an idea of how effective we can be when we're all working together.

We've done some good work. I asked last night, and I ask again, if anybody can show me where this committee has been anything other than positive and moving forward and trying to work in tandem with the government, other than on Bill C-33 when it dropped that on the floor. I won't revisit that in detail, but you will recall, Chair, that it disrupted all the work we were doing because it was disrespectful of the committee's work. It basically made it a make-work project. It tabled a bill without waiting for our input into it.

This government promised that committees were going to matter, that it was going to respect them, and it was going to respect their input. I can't think of a better example than to reinforce the fact that within days—not motions, and squabbling, and off to the subcommittee, and fighting there, and taking forever, and us not wanting to give the government the benefit of succeeding at implementing its agenda—none of that was there. The evidence is in what we did. I will stand by the evidence that has to be there in Hansard to show how we approached this.

That's what the government can achieve just by asking. That's before we even get to the all but omnipotent powers of a majority government in the Canadian parliamentary system.

When The Globe and Mail makes reference to it having its majority on committees further ensuring that little gets in the way of its legislative agenda, that's again at the point where it has to actually use that power to force the opposition to follow in a direction it doesn't want to go.

Such was the goodwill on this committee. None of that was needed. In fact, we were quite pleased to do the work, because it did reflect some of the values and priorities coming out of the NDP caucus and, I suspect, also out of the Conservatives. We had lots of good reasons to want to do it, but my point in saying that is to show that when this committee, because of the nature of the work we do, is in non-partisan mode, which is probably 80% to 90% of the time, we do good work.

When The Globe and Mail makes reference to the amount of control that a government has at committee, that's before we even get to the part where it can get things done just by asking nicely.

[An hon member]

That's a strategy, asking nicely.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That would be something new, wouldn't it, asking nicely?

I had pointed out why the new House leader came in with a whole different approach, dropping things out of the blue, followed up by motions related to a discussion paper that virtually tie the hands of the opposition 100%. There was no discussion with House leaders, just the exact opposite. Supposedly going from the old government House leader to the new government House leader was going to be an improvement. I guess in some ways it was to the extent that she didn't bring in M-6. She brought in this, another wolf in sheep's clothing.

It goes on, Mr. Chair.

Afterwards it says,

It typically also uses its majority to control committees, further ensuring that little gets in the way of its legislative agenda. There is little except its own conscience, and its fear of voters in the next election, to stop a majority government from doing what it wants. Which is where the opposition parties come in.

This is a parliamentary system, not a congressional system.

They can prick the conscience of the Prime Minister and his cabinet in Question Period, which is well covered by the media and will often generate unflattering headlines for the government.

And as legislation moves through Parliament, opposition members can question, delay and filibuster in the House and on committees, and thereby force the government to use its majority to curtail debate in a unilateral fashion, which never looks good to the public.

This is standard procedure in parliaments everywhere. It is not always pretty, but it helps keep governments accountable. Mr. Trudeau, however, thinks it’s all a nuisance.

It's not the NDP that said that. It's not even the Progressive—pardon me, the Conservatives. That really was a mistake. It's not the Cons. It's The Globe and Mail. Its observation is that Mr. Trudeau, the Prime Minister, thinks it's all a nuisance. That's its interpretation of what Mr. Trudeau's opinion is of the House and committees. That didn't take long.

I'll go back to the editorial, Mr. Chair.

His government considers the opposition’s limited arsenal

—which, by the way, it's trying to limit even more in its discussion paper—

to be “tactics which seek only to undermine and devalue the important work of Parliament,” and which “sow dysfunction” and are not “rational” or “defensible,” according to a discussion paper it released on its proposed changes last month.

Those contentions are cynical bunk.

Oh, how I wish I had been able to deliver those kinds of quotes, but then, they probably would have sounded a bit over the top, both because of the way I would do it because that's just what I do—

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Coming from you....

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It's what I do; I can't help myself, but also just because it would be sort of expected. Instead, The Globe and Mail editorial, commenting on the government's view of our response to its discussion paper, is that, “Those contentions are cynical bunk.” I love it: “bunk”.

The Trudeau government is hawking a utopian vision of Parliament, in which members from different parties politely discuss the government’s proposed legislation on a schedule set by mutual agreement, and there are cheers all around when the House enacts laws that are a perfect reflection of the selfless compromises agreed to in a collegial fashion on committees and in the House.

I will say this much, though: the Liberal government's actions certainly have the NDP and the Conservatives as close to a utopian arrangement as we ever thought would exist in terms of how well we're working together to defend our collective rights, as little as they are now, from being further eroded.

And obviously they're being very sarcastic.

It is interesting how, when we are working well together, in the same way as at the public accounts committee, it almost does reflect that. And it does happen, and it did happen, and was happening in this committee while we were dealing with exactly this subject in two different studies.

I just got the hook from the chair. You saw that, too, eh? You're waiting to see how quickly I came to heel. It was really quickly, because I do know where the power is.

Moving on:

In this paradise of reason, the government has no hidden agenda and never tables politically motivated bills that are deeply flawed. There are no Fair Elections Acts, no bills reducing citizens’ privacy in the name of fighting terrorism–and no blatant partisanship of any kind. There are just sunny ways passing beneath crisp rainbows.

Sometimes, I have to tell you, the Prime Minister gives the impression that he really does see some things that way, but that's just a personal observation. It's not meant to take away from his obvious other skills, or he wouldn't be where he is right now, in New York as the Prime Minister of the country talking to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

However, these are interesting observations nonetheless.

It continues:

It would be very convenient for Mr. Trudeau if he could fool Canadians into thinking that Parliament needs a “recalibration of the rules to balance the desire of the minority’s right to be heard with the majority’s duty to pass its legislative agenda,” another line from the government’s discussion paper.

But this, too, is bunk.

I love “bunk”. That's a great word for speech-making. It's perfect: bunk. I love it.

But this, too, is bunk. Is the Prime Minister really saying that there is an imbalance in favour of the opposition that is preventing his government from doing its “duty”? That the chips are stacked against him? If so, he’s being absurd.

Again, it's The Globe and Mail. They often try to be the grown-up in the room.

Look at the language it's using. Not us, although I would have loved to have some of that language. It's The Globe and Mail, and it's speaking on an issue in which the government is trying to frame what it wants as motherhood and modernization.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

It's a key word, modernization.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's it's buzzword. It covers a lot of political sins.

It continues:

But this, too, is bunk. Is the Prime Minister really saying that there is an imbalance in favour of the opposition that is preventing his government from doing its “duty”? That the chips are stacked against him? If so, he's being absurd.

For the record, the government's proposals include one to limit committee members' interventions to 10 minutes—an obvious attempt to reduce the opposition's ability to make a public display of its dissent by filibustering during hearings.

Sound familiar? Because that's exactly where we are right now. Fast-forward, if the government got its way a year from now, and it was doing something else that was denounced just as strongly as The Globe and Mail does here, there would not be the ability to do what we're doing now, which is to hold up the government.

That's it. We're not defeating it. We're not limiting its exercise of power in any other way, other than exercising—and remember, it's the government that made this a 24-7 filibuster instead of just a little mini-buster like what we have at committee, where you meet twice a week. The hours of this committee are 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock. If this had followed the way Mr. Reid and I thought it was going to go, we would still possibly be filibustering if we were still at this same impasse, but it would only be happening on Tuesday and Thursday between 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock, which is the regularly scheduled time of this committee.

That happens all the time on the Hill. There are something like 26 committees here, and I believe—I stand to be corrected—nine committee rooms. There are more meetings going on at any given time, and I guarantee you that during the course of a week there is at least one, if not half a dozen, threats or indications that if the government doesn't start getting a little more reasonable it may find itself in a filibuster situation. That threat or the mere hint that it may happen is often enough to prevent a logjam, and away we go.

Lastly, the ability to speak until you're done is not just about filibustering and doing the histrionics that I'm doing right now.