You've got the gavel ready to go. There are a lot of Canadians who'd like to vote right now that you do that. However, with apologies to Canadians, we do have a process to follow.
The process at this stage is to try to force the government to see the light and understand that the wonderful discussion they want to have is one that we're eager to have too. The difference is that the government wants to have what they would call equal, fair discussions, but always reserving the right, if they don't like the way the negotiations go, to just opt out of sunny ways and suddenly use their majority to ram through whatever they desire, regardless of how everybody else feels.
That's where we are. Every time this committee suspends, that's great—we make no bones about it—because our purpose is to prevent that discussion from starting until we have established what the rules of engagement will be.
Again, the government is trying to have everyone focus on the idea that all we want is a discussion. That's all. We just want to talk about these things.
We are ready to do that, but we are not ready to do that while the government maintains that they have the moral right to use their overwhelming majority to smother the opposition and deny us an equal say in the rules that determine how we make laws.
It's unfortunate, because it's a bit like a strike. There are no winners. The second you go out, work is stopping. The company is losing. Wages are not being earned. There are no winners. But sometimes in this world there are certain principles that you have to stand up for and pay whatever price. We run the risk in the opposition that the public will turn, or that the media that informs the public will say, in their dispassionate evaluation, that we're just being obstructionist. That's always a risk.
Before I move to a letter that was just released a few hours ago, it has to be underscored that the reason we're here, at 20 minutes to five on a Wednesday, debating this motion, is that the government refused to adjourn the very first meeting. Again, here in this room, parliamentary la-la land, this is two weeks ago Tuesday. It's two weeks ago yesterday. We're still on that day because the government wouldn't allow the committee to adjourn at its regular time. It's supposed to adjourn at 1 o'clock. The government unleashed an unwarranted sneak attack on the opposition, who are the minority, by refusing to allow the committee to adjourn at its regular natural time, thereby thrusting Mr. Reid, in what was supposed to be a two-hour period of speaking, into unlimited.
If this were the regular process, the filibuster started by the opposition parties would only play out at committee Tuesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. That's our normal business time. Filibusters happen all the time—“mini-busters”, if you want—where there's give-and-take at the committee. For some reason, the government's about to use their majority to do something that the opposition deems is unfair or unwise or unwarranted, so they quickly make the decision and say, “Look, I'm not just going to let that happen here. If I need to, I'll run the clock.” Running the clock means that you will just take the floor and keep going until the committee is over, thereby denying the government the opportunity to use their majority to ram something through.
Now, normally they, don't last very long. I've only been involved in one other major filibuster like this, and it's interesting that it was under the previous Harper administration, which pulled the same stunt. We were debating Bill C-23, the unfair elections act, on changes to the election laws, and I indicated that I was going to hold things up. In that case, we were looking to get the committee to travel, to get input from people. That's all we were seeking: that element of fairness.
I indicated that until we got that, it was going to be a problem, and we were going to seize things up, and they did exactly the same thing to me that the Liberal majority government did to Mr.Reid. That surprises a lot of people, because when they get the notice paper, a lot of people believe that if a meeting is called for 11 o'clock and is going to adjourn at one, it would, lo and behold, commence at 11, and then adjourn at one. A couple of minutes after one, as the committee Hansard will show, I believe it was a Conservative colleague of Mr. Reidwho made the point that it was a minute or two past one o'clock, the time that we usually adjourned. It was at that point that the chair had to advise that it requires majority support.
I learned that civics lesson the hard way too. It comes as a shock to a lot of people that a meeting that's scheduled, on paper, called by the chair, with all the proper format, layout, and language, and is supposed to start at 11 and end at one, doesn't really have to end at one. It is implied when the chair adjourns at one o'clock that a majority is in support. The government gave indication to Mr. Bagnell, our chair, that this implied consent was not there. Therefore, the chair had no option, absolutely no option, other than to have the meeting continue. That's what thrust this into the big leagues. That's what made this a much bigger deal than we did at committee.