Thank you, Chair.
Part of my punishment to the government for what they've done is that I'm going to start by singing What a Difference a Day Makes.
Well, well, well, so the government launches a thermonuclear attack on the opposition, and the bomb blows up on the launching pad. I'm of course referring to the fact that the chair is going to adjourn or suspend, probably, this discussion in a little less than one hour. Whereas the government was all bloody-minded that they were going to force us to actually capitulate at the end of the day, here we are now, a day later, and the government is blinking.
In the next 50 minutes or so that I have, Chair, I want to just take the time, because there will be a week before we come back. I wouldn't be one to suggest that there are millions of Canadians hanging on this debate, but I would say that for people who are serious about studying the politics and the give-and-take and the thrust of what happens here on Parliament Hill, there is a lot of attention on this. Those who care about democratic reform and about electoral promises are watching very carefully, both on the activist side...and, you know, there is a whole host of the academic world that pays attention to these things, too.
My intent—rather than my usual goal, which is to try to convey messaging by being at least partway entertaining—in this next period is to lay out exactly how we got here, so those who want to write about this and comment on it over the next week at least have a factual basis for understanding how we got here. It's not straightforward. Like most of what we do in politics, it's not crystal clear, and rules around here are often arcane and complex, which is why, Chair, you have the clerk to advise you on the rules, as experienced as you are. I was a chair too, and we can't know all the rules. There are just too many permutations. We have experts.
In each of our caucuses, we have experts. We have Rob Sutherland, who is just a national treasure in terms of understanding the minutiae.
It's not easy at first glance, even if you've had some experience at politics, to understand where we are, how we got here, and who the good guys are and who the bad guys are here, which is, of course, a subjective analysis at the best of times.
Let's just casually walk through how this slow-motion train wreck happened.
During the last constituency week, at some point—I think midway, or towards the end of that week—the government House leader issued a discussion paper, the infamous discussion paper, which outlines a number of areas that the government would like this committee to “discuss”. They want to have a discussion. In and of itself, that was not huge headline news, because we really didn't know what it meant. There was no comment that came with it. To the best of my knowledge, there was no contact with our House leader or our democratic reform critic. It just magically appeared one day, and Mr. Simms' magical land speed record response with his motion then followed, and he takes his bow, as he should.
That motion is a real straitjacket if there isn't an understanding going into that discussion that the only items being recommended for change in the report should be those items on which there is all-party agreement, because in the absence of that, it's not a discussion. This is just foreplay before the government just moves in with its majority and finishes things off. It'll bide its time and let the opposition talk, but we get into that straitjacket of the magical June 2, by which, if we're not done, there are supposed to be all kinds of catastrophic consequences.
It's interesting how all of a sudden out of that tight time frame, though, the government now can find a whole week during which we don't need to meet, during which we would have 24-7 opportunity. We could have done a lot of work in that time. It's interesting how the government has now decided, “Gee, we don't really want to have that focus over the next week”.
Again, the discussion paper lands. Mr. Simms' motion lands. Most people are focusing on the budget on the upcoming Wednesday, now passed. Then we go to our regular PROC meeting on Tuesday at 11 a.m.
You convened us, Chair. We came to order, and we were in camera. We were continuing our good work, our all-partisan, co-operative, progressive work, on the chief electoral report, a huge, mammoth report with major implications for our country and our future elections. We were doing good work. We arrived here Tuesday morning. Staff were there from the Chief Electoral Office. We had all our mountains of trees that were cut down in front of us, all ready to go.
The government, out of nowhere—I can't say much, but I can say what they did in camera—said they wanted to go public.