Mr. Chair, I guess I have to do the same. I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, I have to say.... I won't take long. Listening to Kevin's story, I had the privilege of learning some very important wisdom about parliamentary procedure, the function of committees, and these types of things from Mauril Bélanger as well.
The first time I chaired a committee, the first time I had the job you're doing, Mr. Chair, Mauril would have been one of my vice-chairs and was where Mr. Johns sits right now. He was the lone Liberal. I can remember learning a lot. There are so many bits of procedure that we don't sometimes realize until we see it for the first time. I think that actually ties back to the debate we're having about the Standing Orders and why it's so important to really fully consider them. There are probably all kinds of untold numbers of unintended consequences that could come from one change to one standing order, and how it can affect other things.
I just remember him. There were some times where I thought I had control of this committee as the chair, and he taught me that sometimes one member who is really well informed can control some of what goes on in a committee pretty easily, too, even though he or she is not sitting in the chair. I learned some things from him that I think were very valuable for me as a person, as a member of a committee, and as a chair. It does speak back as well to why it's so important to consider these changes and make sure you're talking them out and have an agreement among the parties. One change can have such a great impact on so many things, and we don't even realize it at the time.
We have someone like Mr. Nater who has an educational and academic background on these things; and someone like Mauril Bélanger, an example of someone who has a great wealth of parliamentary experience and has probably seen all kinds of situations.
I did have a chance briefly in a minority Parliament, and you would have had one as well, Mr. Chair, a couple of them, I think. He would have been through the whole thing, everything from opposition to government, to minority government to minority opposition, to third party opposition to cabinet, to the whole ball of wax. We all have these different perspectives. That's why it's so important to get those different perspectives and to make sure that everybody's viewpoints are heard and actually considered as part of the process rather than just simply given window dressing. That's an important point.